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Science, the unfortunate omission from the Assises du Newspace Conference

The 4th edition of Les Assises du Newspace was held at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie de la Villette conference centre in Paris on 8 and 9 July. Some 1,000 leading players in the space industry came together with great enthusiasm to discuss the major challenges facing French and European space: sovereignty, defence, industrialisation, sustainability and the new space economy. Despite the determination expressed by a number of speakers, including CNES President François Jacq, who spoke of ‘science as an important cause to which we need to be sensitive’, and the encouraging presence of Estelle Moraux (Director of the Centre spatial universitaire de Grenoble) as a speaker and representative of the academic world, one thing remains clear: when it comes to Newspace, science is often the one that gets left out.

While the Assises du Newspace collective emphasises the key role of the academic world in one of its 12 new proposals, that of the intelligence challenge, we can only regret that it seems confined to serving the needs of industry, i.e. facilitating technology transfer from the public to the private sector and training future generations. Of course, these aspects are essential for the issues raised – and shared by the entire space community – but they should in no way prevent the absence of a national scientific ambition for Newspace.

However, since its creation, the Fédération Nanosats has been constantly highlighting the challenges and needs of a national strategy for scientific newspace. Not only do nanosatellites make it possible to take risks and serve as technological and scientific demonstrators for larger-scale missions, they are also sometimes the only conceivable means of meeting specific objectives. This is why the Fédération Nanosats is recommending the creation of a window or call for tenders dedicated to scientific nanosatellites, which until now have suffered from unfair competition with conventional missions, and, following the example of Philippe Baptiste, the French Minister for Higher Education and Research, and the Assises du Newspace collective, greater development of public-private partnerships, including the funding of Cifre theses.

The Fédération Nanosats sees the collective and the participants in the Assises du Newspace as open, dynamic and ambitious players who, like the Fédération, are keen to develop a national strategy to meet the many challenges facing the sector. With this in mind, the Federation is ready to play an active part in the discussions and to help put into practice certain proposals for a comprehensive Newspace ambition, including scientific research.