Business opportunities in ESA Earth Observation
ESA is a world-leader in Earth observation and remains dedicated to developing cutting-edge spaceborne technology to further understand the planet, improve daily lives, support effective policy-making for a more sustainable future, and to benefit businesses and the economy.
ESA Φ-lab and InCubed – investing in industrial innovation
Commerce and ESA’s Earth observation activities come together through ESA Φ-lab. Conceived with the specific aim of strengthening the competitiveness of European Earth observation, Φ-lab focuses on disruptive and transformational innovation in the industrial and scientific sectors.
As an open innovation laboratory, Φ-lab creates a bridge within the Earth observation ecosystem between actors from industry, the investment community and academia to foster impactful entrepreneurial initiatives. Activities are divided between the Explore Office, which focuses on the initial part of the innovation pipeline, and the Invest Office, which drives proposed products and services to market via the InCubed commercialisation programme.
If you have an activity in mind, for example, a constellation, a satellite, an instrument, a technology, software, a service or an application related to the Earth observation sector and you want to develop it with ESA’s help and then roll it out commercially then InCubed could be the programme for you. The ultimate aim of InCubed is for your development to reach, at least, the minimum viable product stage and be robust from a technical, commercial, programmatic and financial point of view. Your Intellectual Property Rights, 100%, stay with you. The programme can also support further roll out and scale up if appropriate or can provide a solid demonstration capability for you to seek further funding for scaling and expansion.
FutureEO – Earth observation science for society
FutureEO is an ESA programme to develop the foundations of European Earth observation systems and capabilities over the next decades. It covers all aspects of Earth observation including system and architecture studies, instrument pre-development, mission development and operations and the stimulation of innovative Earth science and application developments.
The EO Science for Society element in the FutureEO programme provides a flexible structure to support rapid developments addressing priority interests and emerging opportunities for novel use of Earth observation within the scientific community, national, regional and international public sector institutions and private sector operators. In particular, the Science for Society initiative advances Earth science, pioneers new applications and strengthens the competitiveness of downstream industry, building on the latest ICT tools such as collaborative platforms.
esa-star Publication
The list of on-going business opportunities for Earth observation procurements can be found within the esa-star Publication system.
