The first Romanian satellite will be launched from the Black Sea area using a rocket designed and manufactured exclusively in the country, writes Cristian Gherasim.

With the June launch, Romania will put into orbit its first space satellite, becoming thus the second country in the EU after France to have done so.

According to the Romanian Cosmonautics and Aeronautics Association (ARCA), a private endeavor which focuses on building rockets and high altitude balloons, the launch is scheduled for early June.

By getting involved in launching Romania’s first satellite the Romanian Cosmonautics and Aeronautics Association aims to win the € 10 million prize offered by the European Commission. The award aims to stimulate the European aerospace industry to build satellite launch missiles, with a low impact on the environment and a low launch cost.

On ARCA Facebook page it’s being mentioned that the company has previously blasted into the higher layers of the atmosphere two stratospheric rockets, four large-scale stratospheric balloons, including a cluster-type balloon, and received two government contracts with the Romanian Government and a contract with the European Space Agency. It is also in the process of devising EcoRocket - a semi-reusable, steam-powered missile.

In the meantime, the volume of information needed to be gathered in order to prepare for the June space launch is staggering. There are very demanding requirements to be met in order for everything to go according to plan.

The people involved in every detail of this endeavor have to first go through a very rigorous training program, both from a theoretical but also practical standpoint. The technicalities involved are numerous and so many things can go wrong.

The company handling the launch said in a statement: “ARCA launch missions that include naval operations are the most complex type of mission we conduct. They require an exceptional effort to coordinate operations, in close cooperation with actively involved naval and military and civil aviation units. The security measures of the launch are exceptional, and we are proud of a 100% safety percentage."

We are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Safety of Life (SoL) Service. The service was declared operational by the Commission in March 2011. In nearly 400 airports across Europe, the EGNOS SoL Service is supporting civil aviation precision approaches thanks to improved navigation based on GPS. It makes the aviation sector safer and more efficient for the European operators, while significantly contributing to the reduction of the aviation environmental footprint. The SoL Service is also intended to support applications in a wide range of other domains such as maritime, rail and road.

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said: "Implementing innovation is at the heart of the European Union space programme, allowing many different sectors to take advantage of the space-based services to develop their activities, having at heart the well-being of citizens. The EGNOS SoL is a successful example of this approach.”

EGNOS is Europe's regional satellite-based augmentation system. It has been Europe's first venture in the world of satellite navigation and is used to improve the performances of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as GPS and Galileo in the future. EGNOS improves the accuracy and reliability of GNSS positioning information, while also providing a crucial integrity message to confirm the usability of the GNSS signal. EGNOS is currently managed by the European GNSS Agency (GSA) under the leadership of the Commission. More info on EGNOS can be found here.

The Commission and the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) will present the winners of the MyGalileoSolution and MyGalileoDrone competitions in the first Entrepreneurship Day 2021 virtual press conference today (3 March). The competitions showcase how the agency fosters innovation for SMEs and start-ups based on the EU Space Programme. They will feature the top 80 contestants of both MyGalileoDrone and MyGalileoSolution in three thematic areas, showcasing applications relating to drones, internet of things and mobile applications, all leveraging on Galileo satellite technology.

The winning teams were selected based on their innovative use of Galileo, their market-oriented approach and commercial potential. The total prize pool of the competitions was €1.7 million, including the grand prizes for the top teams and smaller awards for qualifying solutions. Contestants were evaluated by a team of experts composed by the GSA and European Commission and the main award criteria involved innovation, Galileo relevance, market potential and feasibility in realizing the ideas. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “The future of the European space industry is a combination of strong institutional leadership and European approach to New Space. The new Space entrepreneurship initiative: CASSINI launched earlier this year is made to boost start-ups and space innovation. The dynamism of European entrepreneurs using EU space technology is once more confirmed by the very positive reactions to the MyGalileo competitions.” Rodrigo da Costa, GSA Executive Director, said: “The MyGalileoSolution and MyGalileoDrone competitions play an important role in fostering the uptake of Galileo across a wide range of market segments. A key role of the GSA, and of EUSPA in the future, is to increase the competitiveness of the EU downstream industry by supporting innovators, SMEs and start-ups. These two competitions help us to do exactly that.”

Both competitions are in line with the Commission's CASSINI space entrepreneurship initiative for the period 2021-2027. First announced in the EU SME Strategy, the initiative aims to increase the number and the chances of succeeding of space-based start-ups as well as facilitate access to public and private capital for both them and SMEs. For more information on the winners of the competition here.