YPSat-2 connects at the Young Professional Event 2025
From laboratory tours to hands-on workshops, and from panel discussions to payload showcases, ESA’s Young Professional Event 2025 was a celebration of curiosity, collaboration and future-thinking. YPSat-2, amongst other youth-driven projects, contributed to voicing young professionals' ambitions in becoming influential actors of the space industry. With their satellite project on full display, they helped shape the pace and spirit of this year’s event.
YPSat-2 is part of ESA’s Young Professionals Satellite initiative, a voluntary, cross-directorate effort giving early-career members the opportunity to design, build and test a satellite that can fly scientific and technology-demonstration payloads. It fosters real hands-on experience in systems engineering, project coordination and satellite integration, all within the ESA framework. As the mission progresses through its final phases of development, the team brought its current progress to YPE 2025 in a way that was both informative and highly visible.
Held at ESTEC from 2 to 3 June, the Young Professional Event (YPE) 2025 brought together over 230 early-career professionals from across ESA for two days of technical exchange, professional development and creative exploration.
Throughout the event, the YPSat-2 team had the opportunity to present the AIM mission in several ways. A poster session, component models and payload displays gave visitors insight into the satellite’s objectives and structure. A lab tour through the thermal lab and the mechanical workshop ran several times across the day, offering behind-the-scenes access to the hardware under development.
Visitors were introduced to the YPSat-2 payload, AIM, short for Angiology in Microgravity, a biomedical experiment that studies how blood vessels behave in reduced gravity. They learned about the experiment’s design, key components, and scientific objectives, while also getting a closer look at how YPSat-2 is built and how it supports experiments in space-like conditions.
"It was great to see the enthusiasm of the young professionals when they were visiting the labs and workshops" said the communications lead of YPSat-2. "Those are key places to develop and certify payloads, showing how our mission runs like any other"
Young professionals were incited to share and reflect beyond their technical expertise. The event proposed workshops sessions, Environment, Entrepreneurs and Advocacy Working Groups held in the Erasmus Auditorium. On Monday, they participated across major thematic sessions such as Planetary Settlement and Planetary Defence, contributing to discussions alongside experts like the Product Assurance and Safety Manager Heli Greus and the Head of the Planetary Defence Officer Richard Moissl.
The event programme also included interdisciplinary sessions such as Sci-Fi: How Art and Technology Work Together for Space, a mentoring roundtable titled Breaking Barriers, and tours around ESTEC including the Concurrent Design Facility.
Throughout the day, speakers across ESA shared reflections that resonated with the values YPSat-2 represents. In his opening remarks, long-time YPE advocate and Young ESA co-founder Torsten Bieler spoke of the power of early-career leadership and peer-driven collaboration. Later, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher highlighted the role of talent development in achieving the goals of Agenda 2025. This was illustrated through the short video marking ESA’s 50th anniversary made by young professionals at ESA.
The unannounced screening drew attention across the room and sparked conversation well into the networking session that followed.
"I knew about YPSat-2, but hearing from the team members directly helped me understand how much initiative and coordination goes into the work," said a young professional from ESTEC. "It’s clearly a project that pulls together technical depth and team spirit and made me want to be part of it."
Besides the YPE event, social activities were organised throughout the weekend, from a canal cruise and escape room to the ESA YP karting challenge and olympics. This gave the opportunity for young professionals to connect outside the professional setting.
"The event gave us the chance to step out of our immediate work and see how much is happening across ESA," said a payload engineer from YPSat-2. "And being able to represent our mission in that context was both motivating and meaningful."
As YPSat-2 approaches the Critical Design Review, its contribution to YPE 2025 stands as a clear example of what ESA’s early-career professionals can achieve when given space, literally and figuratively, to lead.