Breaking News: The first launch of EU Research and Innovation initiative In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation took place last night!

On Wednesday September 2nd at 22:51 Kourou time (September 3rd  03:51 CEST) at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, the UPMSat-2 microsatellite was successfully launched aboard the Arianespace’s advanced Vega VV16 carrier rocket. This is the Commission’s first endeavour to test new technologies in orbit through the In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation (IOD/IOV) service. While flight opportunities do exist, finding ad hoc missions at an affordable cost, in the required timeframe and at an acceptable risk has become a major challenge, which prompted the European Commission to issue on 12 April 2018 a call for expression of interest (EoI) for IOD/IOV experiments under the Horizon 2020 framework.

As a result, 26 experiments were selected to take part in these European launches, chosen among a panel of individuals, consortiums, industry, research centres and universities looking to test in-orbit applications between 2020 and 2022. As the first beneficiary of this new service, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) designed and built a 50-kg microsatellite (UPMSat-2) set to carry and test six new technologies in orbit.

To mark the launch, Commissioner Thierry Breton stated: “The EU is pleased to have contributed to this first ever European launch of more than 50 satellites for more than 20 different customers. Arianespace demonstrates Europe’s capacity to offer new rideshare launch services on global market. IOD/IOV enables the space research community to develop space technologies and test them under real conditions. It supports technology maturity, reduces time to market and guarantees Europe’s continued independent access to space. Such collaboration spurs European innovation".

On top of helping the scientific community to build more efficient and robust satellites, IOD/IOV will enable SMEs, researchers and large companies to bring new technologies to market in a reduced timeframe.

This launch is a further step towards increased global competitiveness and innovation in the space sector for the EU and will support European non-dependence for access to space with the European manufactured launchers Vega- and Ariane launched from the European Spaceport of Kourou. In addition, bringing technologies to market will be much quicker as IOD/IOV will allow them to be effectively tested in orbit.