Satellite telecommunications, navigation and earth observation have radically altered our way of communicating with each other, and our way of moving, enabling us to map our living space digitally with unequalled precision. They make us better understand and measure phenomena like the climate change, help to provide protection against natural disasters and other potential threats, and offer us an information advantage.
A multitude of space applications have become a matter of course and are an inseparable part of daily life. Global space flights, and in particular European space flights, are standing at an economic and institutional threshold of a new development level.
Satellite-based use and exploration of the near-earth space and the distant space will help us to find solutions for major challenges to our society in the 21st century. For this purpose, we need visions for their development, and we require strategies for their use. Around 100 Austrian enterprises, research organisations and universities are working on the development of European and international space missions to explore the universe, the solar system and the earth system. They develop and deliver products for space flights, for example measuring instruments and components of satellites and carrier systems.
In addition, they use the signals of the European Galileo and EGNOS navigation systems, as well as data and information produced by the European Copernicus Earth Observation System in order to produce useful information and services in many sectors, for example air quality / climate change, agriculture, water management and automated mobility.
