Space technologies are playing an increasingly central role in strengthening resilience across infrastructure, climate, mobility and supply chains. These themes were at the centre of discussions at the Economist’s Space Economy Summit Europe in Lisbon earlier this month, where ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) team, together with ESA’s Strategic Sustainability Team, joined industry leaders, investors and policymakers. Discussions covered everything from AI and geopolitics to investment and regulation, but one message emerged consistently throughout the event: the challenge facing the space sector is no longer technological capability or access to data, but adoption and implementation.
Rita Rinaldo, Head of Applications, Projects and Studies Division at ESA, during her intervention in the fireside chat ‘Beyond rockets: how space underpins Europe’s economy and society,’ underlined that “according to projections, the space downstream sector exceeds three quarters of the worldwide space turnover, which is growing at a rate increasing 10% CAGR. While being a major playing field for European space companies, there is an impellent need to increase efforts to raise more awareness of the value of space as competitive enabler for many economic sectors and how it supports Industry competitiveness.”
“Limited awareness of space capabilities have led to fragmentation across the value chain, meaning that whilst solutions exist, they often do not reach the users, with this lack of coordination leading to lost opportunities for growth’ continued Ms Rinaldo. “This was identified as a critical bottleneck to scaling uptake.”
BASS has partnered with multiple market sector leaders to strengthen cross-sector cooperations and facilitate scaling of space-based solutions. The recent launch of the Task Force “Space for Logistics and Resilient Infrastructure” in March 2026 complements the BASS Task Forces already working on energy, maritime, bioeconomy and smart cities and will boost the opportunities that we are offering to European companies exploiting space to address the many sector challenges.
During the event, Rita Rinaldo and Liz Barrow, Business Applications and Partnerships Officer at ESA, hosted an interactive roundtable session, ‘How space technologies can help mitigate threats to society,’ bringing together stakeholders to explore how space-based technologies can support resilience (particularly in climate, infrastructure and supply chains). Space is no longer seen as a standalone industry, but a critical layer of economic and technological infrastructure underpinning modern society. During the conversation, a number of recurring themes emerged. These included:
- Barriers to growth – space solutions are often presented in technical terms, while industries outside the sector tend to focus on commercial outcomes, operational performance and risk reduction.
- Resilience - geopolitical uncertainty is also reshaping priorities across the sector. Climate risk management, infrastructure resilience and supply chain resilience are no longer solely sustainability objectives, but direct economic and operational priorities for Europe. Resilience needs to be reframed in terms of cost avoidance, risk mitigation, and operational efficiency to accelerate adoption.
- Sovereignty/autonomy - a useful distinction emerged during the discussions: sovereignty is the ability to decide, while autonomy is the ability to act. While Europe may possess strong governance and decision-making structures, fragmentation and external dependencies continue to limit operational autonomy in areas including data access and supply chains.
- Regulation as a driver – whilst excessive regulation can be a significant barrier to growth, especially for SMEs, it can also be a driver for innovation and new markets, particularly where monitoring and verification are concerned, and space is playing a key role here.
- Investment trends - these were also a major area of discussion. Participants noted growing investor interest in the sector, driven in part by large-scale commercial success stories and expectations of future market growth. However, concerns were raised that increasing concentration of capital around a small number of dominant companies could make it more difficult for smaller businesses and applications developers to secure investment. Liz Barrow said, “It is clear that Europe’s ‘scale-up’ gap remains a key structural challenge. While early-stage funding is relatively strong, there is still a lack of large-scale private capital to support growth, meaning companies often rely on public funding or US investors at later stages.”
- Integrating data solutions - access to data is no longer the primary bottleneck. Vast volumes of Earth observation and operational data already exist and more continue to be generated every day. Instead, the challenge lies in converting this information into practical, decision-ready insights that can be integrated into existing business operations and workflows. End users are not looking for more raw data or highly technical platforms; they want clear answers to operational questions, so the opportunity is increasingly about how data is used, interpreted, and embedded into everyday decision-making. The most effective solutions are those that combine space data with other data sources, and which are embedded within existing operational and decision-making systems.
Andrea Vena, ESA Chief Sustainability Officer, was part of the ‘Responsible in orbit, sustainable on Earth: can space power Europe’s climate transition?’ panel at the event. With Europe already placing responsible space activity as central to its policy narrative, and satellite data already feeding into pilot projects in methane detection, deforestation monitoring, grid resilience and flood-risk mapping, the focus of the discussion was again around implementation and how to integrate this into core climate infrastructure to drive improvements at scale.
“Space technologies are crucial for increasing our knowledge, monitoring our planet and delivering key benefit to the sustainable development of society. Therefore, we must preserve the possibility for future generations to benefit from space by making space systems more sustainable and respecting the environments (Earth, Earth’s orbit, and deep space) they are impacting,” said Mr Vena. “Europe is leading this ambition, making responsible space activities central to its policy, with key actions enabling the European space ecosystem to be sustainable and competitive on a global scale, maximising benefits to society while reducing the space sector's environmental impacts.”
The view that the future growth of the space economy will depend less on generating new data, and more on making space-enabled services accessible, integrated, sustainable, and operationally relevant across the wider economy was a key takeaway from the Summit.
“Space is increasingly positioned as core economic infrastructure,” said Liz Barrow. “Across sessions, space was framed as an enabler for mobility, finance, communications, security and resilience—no longer a niche sector, but embedded in wider economic systems.”