Space for growth at Farnborough airshow

The Space Zone in Hall 3 brings together key players from international space agencies and industry in the aerospace, defence, space and security sectors to highlight the increasingly important role of space.

The detailed programme of events can be found in the link to the right.

This year, the ESA exhibition highlights the multiple facets of space: space for Earth, space for knowledge, space for competitiveness and growth.

At this time of unprecedented economic challenges, space has proven to be an engine of economic development, an anchor of stability and a counterbalance to negative trends.

Space-based services are more and more part of our daily life and represent a growing element of the economic and societal value of space.

The ESA exhibition highlights how space pushes the frontiers of knowledge, supports a competitive Europe and creates technical innovation and new business.

From their special vantage points, satellites continuously monitor Earth and its natural processes, delivering critical information and detecting changes in our atmosphere, land, oceans and ice.

Particular emphasis is placed on new data from ESA’s CryoSat ice mission and Swarm, the next mission to be launched in the state-of-the-art series of Earth Explorers.

ESA’s observation satellites have given Europe a leading role in understanding our planet, weather and climate change, providing data and services to a vast community of users.

The exhibition features the new generation of Meteosat and MetOp weather and climate satellites. Visitors can see maps created from satellite information for disaster relief following natural catastrophes.

A special feature focuses on the first in the series of ESA’s Sentinel satellites, part of the EU’s Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security initiative, GMES.

Visitors to the stand can learn more about space-based services provided to aviation by the EGNOS navigation overlay service, operational since March 2011, and about the Galileo satnav constellation, with two satellites already in orbit and two more being launched later this year.

Visitors will also learn how ESA is supporting competitiveness of the satellite telecom industry with Hylas-1, ESA’s first public–private partnership, which has provided broadband services across Europe since 2011, and the upcoming launch of Alphasat, flying on Alphabus, the first European large platform for high-power telecoms satellites.

ESA also develops a wide range of telecom services and applications to provide space solutions in fields such as air traffic management and maritime surveillance efficiently and seamlessly over almost every region of our planet.

New ideas developed for space missions often hold great potential for terrestrial sectors too. ESA’s Business Incubation Centres work to inspire entrepreneurs to turn space-connected business ideas into commercial companies.

Representatives from the ESA incubation centre in Harwell, near Oxford, will be present during trade days from Monday 9 July to Thursday 12 July.

The Space Zone will host a series of high-level events including a dedicated Space Day conference organised and hosted by the UK Space Agency on Tuesday 10 July.

Other events include a conference on careers, Wednesday 11 July, on growth in the space industry on Thursday 12 July and presentations for students on careers in the scientific and technical aerospace sector with ESA astronauts Paolo Nespoli and Tim Peake on Friday 13 July.