The 16th European Space Conference in Brussels
25.01.2024
That’s a wrap-up for the European Space Conference held in Brussels!
Two days of intense and productive discussions between industries and institutions on key decisions taken during the last European Space Agency – ESA Ministerial Conference in Seville and the future of Europe’s access to space.
During his panel, Yohann Leroy reminded the unique positioning and pragmatic approach of MaiaSpace as candidate for the European Launchers Challenge, leveraging on unique European expertise while maintaining the speed, agility and culture of risk of a start-up.
Reminding that MaiaSpace’s launcher performance will range from 500 kg to more than 3 tons depending on the version used (reusable or expendable) and the targeted orbit, he highlighted the relevance to leverage technologies that are scalable, future-proof and that can be amortized on rockets of various sizes, allowing to benefit from economies of scale, and making it a solution of choice for the deployment of constellations such as IRIS² in complement to Ariane 6. This will be a prerequisite to guarantee Europe’s long-term sovereignty in its access to space.
Last but not least, Yohann Leroy acknowledged the necessity to introduce competition as a means to accelerate innovation and launcher developments in Europe, also warning that we will need to combine efforts on a cooperation mode on key technological building blocks requiring significant investment, in order to face the real competition coming from outside Europe.