The annual expedition for space professionals to Bremen for Space Tech Expo Europe is, for many, the highlight of the year. New connections are forged and the very latest advancements in the industry announced, thrown in with new collaborations and product launches. There are also the social aspects, with a key side event being Connecting the Curious – organised by NL Space Campus, together with ESA BIC Noordwijk and ESA BIC Northern Germany, among others. Here is a report with highlights of the November event and a selection of photos supplied courtesy of the respective social media channels of ESA BIC Northern Germany, NL Space and SBIC Noordwijk.
ESA BIC entrepreneurs
At the event in Bremen, there was a huge amount of cutting-edge space technologies to discover, visionary talks to listen to and groundbreaking collaborations to hear about. A number of ESA BIC Noordwijk startups could be spotted working the exhibition floor, for example Brian Treacy of ed-tech startup Turtle Island Space who made valuable connections with academia and various student rocket teams. News announced at the fair from Revolv Space was that its first in-orbit demonstration mission for SARA (solar array rotary actuator) is scheduled for the first half of 2025 and this will be via the DPhi Space’s payload platform and D-Orbit’s ION Satellite Carrier.
A key location on the exhibition floor for many of our startups was the ESA SME and Start-Ups booth. With the continuing celebration of 20 years of the network of ESA Business Incubation Centres, there was an excellent representation of ESA BICs with the warmest of welcomes to the newest centre at ESA BIC Latvia.
There was also a celebration marking the 500th startup joining the ESA BIC network in Germany. This included a panel discussion with (L–R in the photo) Carolin Johannsen of ReImagine Spaces, ESA’s Dietmar Pilz, Walther Pelzer of DLR and Bremen’s Minister for Economic Affairs Kristina Vogt.
After the event, ESA commercialisation officer Matthew Edwards commented: “This year, we are celebrating 20 years of supporting space-related startups through the ESA BIC activity, which is a great milestone. Virtually no one aside from ESA was thinking in 2004 that space startups were worth supporting. Over time, this view has certainly changed and with 32 ESA BICs across 23 countries we have gained many supporters.”
Dutch space innovation representation
Another buzzing booth where many innovations were highlighted was the NL Space pavilion, which included appearances from ESA BIC startups Arceon and Spherical Systems. During the exhibition, news was published on the ESA Commercialisation Gateway website about Arceon’s composite materials being launched into space this month for in-orbit testing (read more about the background to this project here).
Spherical’s own inaugural product – its PCDU (power conditioning and distribution unit) – will be launched to orbit for validation in 2025 via the Silicon-X project with the UARX OSSIE (Orbit Solutions to Simplify Injection and Exploration) satellite, and CEO Thomas Parry can be seen discussing this at the end of this NL Space recap video on LinkedIn. During the expo, the company also announced a new collaboration with Balthazar that reduces semiconductor testing costs by eighty percent.
Invitation to land in the Dutch space ecosystem
With so much innovative Dutch talent on show at the exhibition, this was likely to entice more than a few people to consider relocating their businesses to the Netherlands. And guess what? We have a programme that fully supports that! The busy exhibition was the perfect place to spread the word about the SBIC Soft Landing programme.
It was also ideal that one of the successful graduates of the programme – KM Sense – was exhibiting at the fair and the team were on hand to answer questions. Thanks also to co-founder Emre Ünay for the pitch about the firm’s sensors for satellite manufacturers at Connecting the Curious.
Connecting the Curious – Bremen edition
After the busy first two days at the expo, everyone was looking forward to a chance to unwind. The perfect place was at Connecting the Curious, a networking opportunity for meeting up with friends and colleagues, as well as innovative startups and young talents. This event gets better every year and this third edition was the busiest and best!
This side event of Space Tech Expo Europe was organised by NL Space Campus, along with: BDLI, ESA BIC Noordwijk, ESA BIC Northern Germany and ESA BIC Bavaria, among others. The comperes for the evening – Maaike Smelter, Johannes Krohn and Martijn Leinweber – were joined on stage by a long list of entrepreneurs with inspiring pitches. Martijn commented after the event: “The atmosphere was fantastic, and it was amazing to listen to all those pitches. A big thank you to all participants, startups and young professionals who made this event a success.”
“Seeing so many enthusiastic people come together from the stage was really special. It was yet another unforgettable event! Also great to see so many #ESABIC startups, including the recently opened ESA BIC Latvia joining the event.”
Related news:
Arceon ceramic composites launched to space as part of Europe Material Ageing campaign
Prepare your space business idea for lift off!
Discover everything you need to know about the ESA BIC Noordwijk programme.
