Business ideas for space technology
Deadline: 31 October


Start-up company EATOPS's RIVOPS to monitor oil and gas rigs
 
EATOPS is a start-up company from ESA’s Business Incubation centre in ESTEC and proposes advanced systems to monitor oil and gas installations using technology originally developed for satellite operation control. EATOPS’s system RIVOPS processes the massive amount of data coming from offshore platforms, pipelines and regional production facilities and converts the information into innovative 3-dimensional displays to support operators in their decision making and enable predictive maintenance analysis to become a reality.

Business incubation
 

 
ESA offers Business Incubation at its locations in:
  • ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands
  • ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany
  • ESRIN, the European Centre for Earth Observation in Frascati, Italy.


iOpener brings real racing cars into games consoles
 
iOpener is a start-up company from ESA’s Business Incubation centre in ESTEC and has developed a system to integrate world car racing into the virtual world of games console racing by using satellite navigation data. Today the company employs seven people and recently won the Ernst & Young Best Business Case Award 2006/2007.


 
Miramap is a start-up company from ESA’s Business Incubation centre in ESTEC and develops novel solutions for airborne surveys of land and water surface installations over large areas such as water barriers and dykes. The technology which originally was developed for satellites is a passive microwave remote sensing system. Today Miramap has several clients, including the Dutch Ministry for Traffic and Water Management.

About ESA's Technology Transfer Programme Office (TTPO)
 
Space tech insulates tomographs
 
A multi-layer structure, comprising 20 layers of aluminised polyester films originally developed for space, can insulate for temperature differences of up to 300 Kelvin. This material is now being used to insulate the vacuum chambers of tomographs which use liquid helium at a temperature of –270ºC to cool the vacuum chamber.



Release date: 27 November 2007