European Lunar Exploration Workshop
Europe is going to the moon! In light of future exploration plans, C-Space examined our nearest neighbour through the eyes of several international experts. This workshop raised awareness of Europe’s activities and plans, addressing the motivations, challenges and opportunities presented by lunar exploration. The topics covered engineering, medicine, manufacturing, physics, astronomy, geology and industry applications. The workshop was hosted by renowned space journalist Leo Enright.

Earth Observation – €6.4M Funding Success in DTIF 3 for CAMEO

The CAMEO project, led by Assoc. Prof. Michela Bertolotto from UCD's School of Computer Science, offers a new approach to accessing international satellite/UAV/Land-based sensor data. Along with mechanisms for combining these datasets with national climate, agriculture, and marine databases, tangible benefits for Irish industry, the public sector, and researchers can be realised, while also establishing Ireland as an international leader in the use of EO data for economic, environmental and societal benefit. C-Space will lead the networking and training aspects of the project, the latter in partnership with Space Industry Skillnet. The members of this consortium, led by UCD, are Assoc. Prof. Michela Bertolotto UCD School of Computer Science; Vertice Integration Services Ltd T/A Vertice Cloud; BCC Risk Advisory Ltd T/A Edgescan; The Icon Group Ltd; Treemetrics Ltd; TechWorks Marine Ltd; EMC Information Systems International and Oracle Corporation Ltd.
ESA Space Solutions Centre Ireland @ UCD

NovaUCD has joined the ESA Space Solutions Centre Ireland (ESA SSCI) consortium to better support entrepreneurs and start-ups in the space industry. This national consortium is led by the Tyndall National Institute and funded by ESA and Enterprise Ireland.
Eligible start-ups which successfully apply to locate at NovaUCD through ESA SSCI will be able to avail of support provided through the ESA BIC network alongside the support programmes and activities provided by NovaUCD. These companies also receive €50,000 project funding for development of their enterprise.
NovaUCD has already supported several space active companies, including ENBIO, O.C.E. Technology, ProvEye and PlasmaBound.
EIRSAT-1 Status and Impact Report
The spacecraft Engineering Qualification Model (EQM) continues to undergo extensive testing in UCD’s spacecraft assembly clean-room. Following completion of this phase, it will undergo an environmental test campaign later in the year at ESA ESEC’s Cubesat Test Facility in Redu, Belgium, pandemic-restrictions permitting. It has been an immensely challenging year for laboratory work, but the team has once again shown their amazing resilience, creativity and innovation in creating remote working solutions to keep the project moving forward. The EQM is an exact duplicate of the Flight Model and is used to retire major technical risks. The EQM will stay in UCD after launch, allowing us to troubleshoot any issues and test out new software before uplinking it to the spacecraft. Team members, all of whom are students, have been preparing technical papers on various aspects of the mission and presenting their work at SpaceOps 2021, the International Conference on Space Optics and Communicating Astronomy with the Public.
An EIRSAT-1 Space Art Challenge outreach project, run in partnership with the Museum of Literature Ireland and the Junior Certificate School Programme Demonstration Library Project, received more than 300 entries.
C-Space delivers Doing Business with ESA and Winning ESA Proposal Training Courses with Space Industry Skillnet
Supporting Industry is core to C-Space’s mission and, in partnership with SIS, we have developed and delivered two training courses targeted at supporting Irish involvement with ESA. These are the one day Doing Business with ESA course to support those relatively new to or interested in working with ESA; and the two day Winning ESA Proposals which teaches a proven process for delivering high quality proposal in an efficient way. These courses were delivered in March 2021. These courses will be run again in the autumn and you can register interest through the Space Industry Skillnet webpage.
C-Space member Prof David Browne presents at UN global webinar series
On May 19th, Prof David Browne was invited by the United Nations to address their global Hypergravity/Microgravity webinar series on Material Science. Congratulations to David from all at C-Space on this honour. His talk can be found here. [Talk starts at 1h20m].
Quantum Physics in Space Seminar by Prof Mauro Paternostro QUB
On May 13th, Prof Mauro Paternostro of Queens University Belfast was hosted by C-Space and the UCD Centre for Quantum Engineering, Science and Technology to deliver a seminar on Quantum Physics in Space. Prof Paternostro described how advances in quantum control and engineering are spurring a revolution in the way fundamental physics questions are explored at the empirical level. At the same time, he reported that they are the seeds for future disruptive technological applications of quantum mechanics. One of the key points made was that a space-based environment may open new avenues for both the development of quantum technologies and their use for fundamental and applied investigations. Prof Paternostro covered both fundamental scientific questions enhanced by the use of quantum technologies in space and the possible implementation of such technologies for a variety of academic and commercial purposes. Thank you Mauro!
IAU Symposium set for Ireland in 2022
In early May over 200 scientists from around the world (virtually) attended the five-day International Astronomical Union Symposium on "Massive Stars Near and Far". This major international conference was organized by a group of astronomers at institutes across Ireland, including UCD. At the meeting, the scientific community came together to discuss exciting results on gravitational waves, massive stellar evolution and supernovae and more; as well as ht prospects for upcoming telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope. While this meeting was held online due to the pandemic, an in-person conference is planned to be held in Ireland in early 2022.
Interns from C-Space
The C-Space director and UCD Science internship manager met with a number of SMEs who are part of ESACCL to present the opportunity for recruitment of UCD Space Science and Technology Masters’ students to conduct a 3-month internship in their business. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact internship manager via scienceinternships@ucd.ie
Have you got Space Ideas? Try ESA’s Open Space Innovation Platform
ESA’s OSIP is a website that enables the submission of novel ideas for space technology and applications. Anybody is welcome to submit ideas through OSIP. OSIP allows ESA to discover novel ideas and invest in new unconventional activities to foster advancement in the space industry. There has been relatively little participation from Irish universities in the co-funded research activities and on the OSIP platform in general so please do check it out: https://ideas.esa.int/