Space R&D, essential for EU’s economic recovery

The 2020 EU Industrial R&D investments Scoreboard, showing the data for 2019,  highlights EU companies’ 40% share in global Aerospace and Defense R&D and acknowledges its crucial role. In fact, EU Space companies have a diversified and strong technological and industrial base. According to this report, as an R&D-intensive sector, aerospace together with defense increased R&D outlay by 4.3% from 2018 to 2019, taking on more highly qualified employees. Moreover, Aerospace and Defense comes out as the best-performing net-sales sector among EU companies over the previous year, with a 13.5% increase.

Space R&D provides indispensable services for today´s daily life

For more than 50 years Space R&D has provided great benefits for citizens’ daily lives. Many household and consumer goods have their origin in Space research: solar panels, heart implants, battery-powered tools, water-purification systems, cellphones cameras, etc. Crucially, neither would accurate weather information be possible without meteorological satellites; globally broadcast live worldwide TV sports events would not be doable without communication satellites; smart driving with geo-localization for route optimization would be not feasible without positioning-satellite constellations, and monitoring environment for biodiversity or global warning would be not viable without Earth observation satellites. This is just to mention a few essential space-based services. Others, such as deep space exploration or asteroid-trajectory monitoring, are without any doubt a source of inspiration and show a clear need for international cooperation. Factor in too the promising new services as the sector matures and the low-risk aversion of the new players.

In the latest program GMV has doubled its EU collaborative research effort

GMV’s strength in the sector is based on its in-house R&D, tapping into emerging digitalization trends with its reinforced core technologies and skills to deliver high-precision satellite-positioning services for autonomous driving, robotics for hazardous operations to humans, and high spatial resolution Earth observation services to sectors and activities of high social importance such as supporting emergency response actions, saving migrants’ lives on boats in the Mediterranean, optimizing agriculture, monitoring climate change or promoting sustainable management of forests, inter alia.

GMV works with an excellent stable of partners, suppliers, and customers, building up between them multidisciplinary teams for collaborative research and international cooperation. This allows us to deliver excellent science-based products and cutting-edge services integrating artificial intelligence. Just to give you a quick idea of GMV as an innovation powerhouse, it has almost doubled its effort in EU collaborative research, winning contracts worth 11.4 million euros in FP7 (the EC Seventh Framework Programme 2007-2013), this figure soaring to 22.6 million euros in H2020 (the latest EC collaborative Research Programme 2014-2020).

Critical success factors for recovery: keeping R&D focused on delivery and sustainability

Critical success factors for crisis resilience and competitiveness are based on advanced technologies and diversification. This is the right moment for keeping your investments in line with your market needs. GMV Aerospace’s collaborative research prowess has been hailed in the latest EC innovation radar. You can see some examples in our channel:

• MySustainableForest
• Space robotics.

Moreover, space supports and contributes to the achievement of EU sustainability goals. In fact, according to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, 65 out of 169 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (almost 40%) benefit from EU Galileo and Copernicus (satellites constellations for navigation and Earth observation). This makes us proud of EU Space technology, proud of being European.

Horizon Europe: the new EU collaborative research program with opportunities for joint recovery

As you may well be aware, last February Horizon Europe was launched, with a robust and ambitious 30% budget increase on the previous EC collaborative research program. We are really looking forward to a successful Horizon Europe; do not hesitate to contact me to join our R&D added-value network and improve your competitive position in the aftermath of the crisis. GMV is determined to help bring in green and digital EU Space R&D for a modern and inclusive Europe:

Space is for all!

Author: Almudena Sánchez