September 23, 2020

FRANCE-LUXEMBOURG - SPACE COOPERATION FIRST CNES-LSA WORKSHOP

CNES and the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA) held a first workshop today by videoconference to consider possible areas for cooperation and engage negotiations on a future framework agreement. A first framework agreement was signed in 2009 between CNES and Luxembourg’s Ministry of Research. In the intervening years, oversight of space policy has been entrusted to the Ministry of the Economy.

Created in September 2018 within the Ministry of the Economy, LSA was established with the goal of fostering the development of the national space industry while supporting firms in this sector, notably through national and European R&D programmes. LSA is also seeking more broadly to boost the space ecosystem, by nurturing human resources, supplying innovative funding solutions and providing support to education and academic research infrastructures. Since 2016, with the launch of its SpaceResources.lu initiative, Luxembourg has also made space exploration and utilization of space resources a big priority. It is within this context that today’s first workshop between CNES and LSA was held.

At the workshop, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall presented CNES’s three key areas of focus:

⦁    Innovation, through space projects seeking to improve citizens lives and serve their economic and social needs
⦁    Climate, using satellites to study it and develop new understanding
⦁    Exploration

He also pointed to initiatives that CNES has adopted in recent years to spur the space sector’s development, notably those matching LSA’s priorities like ConnectByCNES, which is working closely with communities, industry clusters, incubators, innovation hubs and co-working spaces, and the CosmiCapital innovation fund aiming to boost investment with an annual injection of some €20 million and by acting as a catalyst for other financial stakeholders. Utilization of space resources and funding tools for the space sector were among the other issues addressed by the two agencies.

On the sidelines of the workshop, Jean-Yves Le Gall commented: “This workshop has given us a great opportunity to forge new ties with LSA and step up our cooperation. We are working towards a new framework agreement to extend this cooperation to new areas and enable us to work together on economic issues to meet the challenges and opportunities being shaped by the major shifts in our sector.”

Marc Serres, CEO of LSA, added: “The space sector is undergoing a deep transformation. This workshop not only gave us the chance to inject fresh impetus into the cooperation between Luxembourg and France, but also to discuss initiatives geared towards driving this evolution. Our discussions were very constructive and enabled us to identify potential partnership opportunities. I believe we have a very bright future to look forward to.”

CONTACTS
Pascale Bresson    Press Officer    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 75 39    pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
Raphaël Sart    Press Officer    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 74 51    raphael.sart@cnes.fr