news Archives | ESA Technology Broker Czech Republic

Could space technologies contribute to city development? The first Space 4 Cities event was an opportunity to discuss such opportunities. Co-hosted by the TC CAS and the Ministry of Transportation, Czech Republic and ESA, 70 city and region representatives attended a series of space technology presentations.

Apart from ESA representatives, the presentations were held by speakers from the Ministry of Transportation, Czech Republic, CzechInvest agency, TC CAS and Czech Technical University in Prague, as well as by the private sector representatives. The presentations focused on proven space to ground applications, such as satellite data for city monitoring and development (GISAT), analysis of local climate for green and effective buildings (Let’s Earth), satellite tools for sustainable cities (World from Space), applications of drones for smart cities (Aleego).

The Technology Center CAS was honored to host a round table with Rick Tumlinson, who is considered to be the biggest visionaire in the current space conquest. Together with representatives of R&D and technology we had the opportunity to discuss business related to space technologies and Czech – American business cooperation opportunities. Apart from the business representatives, the government representatives were guests at the round table.

Rick Tumlinson co-founded several enterprises focusing on space technology R&D, contributed to commercial policy establishment in the space industry (so called NewSpace industry), and was present at founding the International Space University in France. Despite having a broad range of activities, Rick currently dedicates most of his time to Deep Space Industries (DSI), a company he founded in 2013 in Silicon Valley. DSI researches space and mining technologies for the future mineral mining on asteroids. Czech company Metatron Global, a.s., was a participant of the round table as it is an investor of DSI.