Magali Vaissiere, ESA Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications, and Rafael Jordà Siquier, founder and CEO at Open Cosmos signed the public–private partnership to launch the Sapion project at the UK Space Conference 2017 in Manchester on 20 May 2017.
Sapion is the first project in ESA's ARTES Pioneer partner programme offering timely, cost-effective opportunities to demonstrate satcom technologies and services in orbit.