Living Planet Symposium Extras News: Day 3
ESA’s week-long Living Planet Symposium in Austria is over halfway through, gathering thousands of attendees to explore the latest breakthroughs in Earth science and space technologies. In addition to in-depth coverage on specific themes from the symposium, we also bring you the following 'extras’: six New Space companies formally join Copernicus, ESA and UN-Habitat strengthen ties, and ESA and JAXA sign a Framework Agreement on climate collaboration.
Six new commercial missions join Copernicus
New Space companies and space scale-ups are playing an important role in creating a dynamic European space industry. Now, six additional satellite data providers have joined Copernicus – the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space Programme – as emerging contributing missions.
Today, at the Living Planet Symposium ESA and the EC formalised these agreements.
Copernicus supplies key data feeds into the Copernicus Services for everyday applications and that help address climate change, manage environmental crises, support humanitarian operations, and guide businesses on the path to greater growth and sustainability.
Central to Copernicus are the Sentinel satellites, developed and mainly operated by ESA. However, despite their capabilities, there are data needs that the Sentinel fleet alone cannot fulfil. To fill these gaps, the programme relies on Copernicus Contributing Missions – commercial satellite missions that provide complementary data. Thanks to the six agreements signed today, there are now 25 commercial data providers to supply Copernicus with satellite data across various domains.
The six new companies unveiled at the Living Planet Symposium are the second cohort of emerging contributing missions taken from the European New Space ecosystem. These are Germany’s Marble Imaging, Portugal’s GEOSAT, UK-based SatVu, France’s ORUS , Belgium’s Aerospacelab, and Unseenlabs from France.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Chelli, said, “The aim of integrating emerging European New Space companies into Copernicus is to ensure the programme remains at the forefront of Earth observation in a fast-evolving sector. I warmly welcome the newest members to the Copernicus Contributing Missions programme.”
Read more about the agreement.
UN Habitat and ESA set to consolidate collaboration
UN Habitat signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ESA today, Wednesday 25 June. The MoU is a formal signature for a long-standing and productive partnership, which has given rise to several successful initiatives. ESA has collaborated with UN Habitat on projects developing products related to human settlements including for example the World Settlement Foodprint and IDEAtlas for slum detection.
World Settlement Foodprint produced the first global map of urban settlements, through an ESA funded project. The 2019 version provided a 10-m resolution global dataset entirely based on Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data, and WSF Evolution that provides 35 years of urbanisation globally, showing how cities expand over a certain timeframe.
IDEAtlas is a project that maps slums and distinguishes them from other built-up areas through an AI-based tool that uses Sentinel-2 data. The project also provides related products about issues such as human poverty, including slum temporal dynamics and slum severity.
As part of this collaboration, UN Habitat and ESA have mutually contributed to each other’s recent key urban events: UN Habitat has supported ESA’s URBIS workshop and ESA contributed to key sessions at the World Urban Forum, bringing the Earth observation perspective to the user community.
The MoU aims to improve the exchange of knowledge and expertise between the two parties on the use of Earth observation technologies for urban monitoring, with a focus on priority thematic areas ranging from urbanisation patterns, housing and informal settlements, urban climate resilience and urban services and infrastructure.
Five years on: EC and ESA reflect on Earth science alliance
Five years on, the Earth System Science Initiative – a strategic alliance between the European Commission and ESA – has become one of the most ambitious frameworks for environmental research and innovation on the planet.
Launched in 2020 to boost Europe’s leadership in understanding a rapidly changing Earth, the initiative has grown into a powerhouse of scientific integration. With more than 100 projects funded, the initiative connects a thriving scientific community tackling urgent issues from melting ice and ocean health to climate extremes and atmospheric change.
At this week’s Living Planet Symposium, a high-level Agora session brought together institutional leaders and top scientists to reflect on the initiative’s progress and further chart its future. Among the highlights: the joint launch of new methane research projects, aimed at decoding one of the most potent and least understood greenhouse gases.
“Europe must lead with knowledge’, said ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, “This initiative is about empowering society with the environmental intelligence it needs to act decisively.”
“What makes the initiative unique is its joint approach: aligning EU policy priorities with ESA’s scientific capabilities, connecting selected scientific activities, strategically and operationally, in terms of goals, content, and planning. This coordinated strategy means Europe can act at scale – combining unique and increasing European space-based capabilities, AI-enabled models and disciplinary expertise to generate trusted, policy-ready knowledge.”
Looking ahead, the EC–ESA alliance seeks to deepen its impact and reinforce Europe’s strategic autonomy in environmental intelligence, ensuring that open, trusted science continues to inform the decisions that shape a liveable, secure, and sustainable future for all.
ESA and JAXA partner on climate action
Reaffirming their shared commitment to tackle the climate crisis, ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) today signed a landmark Framework Agreement at the Living Planet Symposium – an agreement that cements a strategic partnership dedicated to Earth observation and climate action.
The agreement represents a deepening of an already strong collaboration between the two space agencies, notably exemplified by the EarthCARE mission and shared initiatives to monitor greenhouse gases and expand synthetic aperture radar capabilities.
By uniting their technological expertise, scientific insight and satellite infrastructure, ESA and JAXA are aiming to lead global efforts in understanding and responding to climate change.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, “This agreement reflects our mutual commitment to cooperation and innovation. Combating climate change requires sustained international collaboration, underpinned by high-quality, long-term data from space.”
With this strategic framework, ESA and JAXA are aligning their goals to expand joint missions, to enhance quality-assured data sharing, and to drive forward innovations in Earth observation that seek to tackle today’s societal challenges. The partnership is designed to deliver lasting global impact – enabling targeted climate adaptation and mitigation strategies through cutting-edge space technologies.
Winner of sustainability award tracks coffee from space
The Living Planet Symposium Sustainable Horizons Award was presented this afternoon to an innovative project that uses satellite data to track goods in agricultural supply chains.
The Orbital Commodity Asset Securitisation (ORCAS) project combines Earth observation satellite data and software to trace commodities such as coffee and cocoa from farm to supermarket shelf.
The developers of the project, Trade in Space Ltd, use a combination of satellite imagery, machine learning and blockchain to track goods. The product boosts transparency and sustainability, also addressing the complexity of sustainability assessments in agricultural supply chains. Since 2020, the project has operated in 41 countries, reaching over 1.3 million farmers.
The award is organised by the Young ESA Environmental Committee in recognition of innovative uses of Earth observation to tackle global challenges and protect our planet. ORCAS was chosen as the winning project because it demonstrated strong impact in the social sustainability domain, particularly in value chain tracking, which is a current strategic priority.
This project demonstrated how Earth observation data can drive meaningful value chain creation, directly benefiting farmers in the Global South. Evaluation was conducted by a panel of ESA experts across climate science, AI, sustainability, and commercialisation, using standardised criteria including quality, feasibility, innovation, and relevance to the Sustainable Development Goals.
GeoBioRemediation, by Fashion for Biodiversity, and AI2Peat, by CeADAR (UCD), also reached the final stage of the awards and all three companies pitched their projects live today.
Follow ESA's Earth observation page for more news from Living Planet Symposium 2025.
