Researchers from three continents gathered at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands for the inaugural Alcantara initative workshop on 20 February 2014 – fostering cooperation between research groups in Europe and those beyond, to jointly tackle key knowledge gaps in space research. Alcantara partnerships take place within existing ESA programmes – two in the first phase. One is the Agency’s long-running TIGER initiative, supporting African countries in applying Earth observation technology to water management. The second being ESA’s Monitor programme, seeking to understand how space weather in the vicinity of the equator – far stronger and less predictable than anywhere else in the world – affects satnav performance.