Austrian space industry mainly provides thrusters and electronic control systems for satellites.

Vienna hosts the united nation office for outer space affairs.

35 comments

  1. We have an ESA facility right next to my town, between Katwijk and Noordwijk, like a 20 minute bike ride for me. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what they do there exactly but their site says they act somewhat like a hub centre, where other stuff comes together and is expended on.

    Edit: They also have a telerobotics lab there, whatever that might mean.

  4. From the airbus website:

    >…Research and development activities in unmanned flight also take place in Manching.

    >In southwest Germany, Friedrichshafen is home to Airbus‘ satellite and information technology. The site is concentrated on the development of satellites, space probes, instruments and equipment for Earth observation, navigation, meteorology and space exploration. Furthermore, the site produces and develops reconnaissance and surveillance systems (C5ISR), security systems and mobile systems. Geo-intelligence products and services also are part of the portfolio of Friedrichshafen. The sites in Ulm and Potsdam represent two further essential pillars for satellite applications and services in the field of Connected Intelligence and Cyber.

    >Airbus employees in Ottobrunn/Taufkirchen, near Munich, produce solar panels for satellites, as well as design, develop and manufacture rocket engines and thrust chambers for the Ariane 5 within the scope of Ariane Group’s activities. The Near Infrared Spectrograph – an instrument capable of detecting the faintest radiation from distant galaxies – is a product of Ottobrunn/Taufkirchen for use on the U.S. James Webb Space Telescope. Taufkirchen is also the headquarters for Airbus Defence and Space.

    >…

    >Additionally, Bremen is a centre of competence for space transportation, manned space flight and space robotics. Its highly-skilled employees work on key programmes such as the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and the human-rated Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle – a joint project between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Bremen is responsible as well for operation of European components on the International Space Station (ISS).

  5. Bulgarian brain drain supports other missions. There are several high profile aerospace engineers I’m aware of that hold key positions in ESA/SapceX/NASA.

  6. Andøya Space center.. has done upshooting of rockets since the 60ies. Among others for ESA. Rockets for space exploration. Also has stationary observatories etc who studies the space . A “fun” fact about the space centre was the situation in 1995.. when a rocket from the space center on a russian radar were being considered being a US trident missile being fired from an uboat outside norway.. Still when the always drunk Jeltsin ruled the Russia and held the atomic button.

    Kongsberg Satelite Services deliveres ground station services for NASA.

  7. Not too much, unfortunatelly. Some of our universities participate in international scientific projects aimed at space research. We have sort of “space agency”, SOSA, but they are mostly focused on popularization of space research among general public and are trying to strenghten our cooperation with ESA (we are still not full member, but I hope we will be soon). They also launched first Slovak satellite in 2017 (or better said, made the satellite and had it launched by someone else). We aren’t doing enough, and I think we have potential to contribute much more – our homeland produced many great scientists before, and we still can even now. Hell, the last person that ever walked on the Moon had Slovak roots.

    Unfortunatelly, general public doesn’t care. Half of our country doesn’t give a shit about what happens outside of their village, let alone outside of our planet. Like, if you look at any space-oriented article on FB feed, half of the comments under it are like “great, we landed another rover on Mars, but bread will not be cheaper, so I don’t care.”

  8. Spain plays a surprisingly important role in space exploration, mainly because of our… geography and climate (weirdly enough)

    We have several Important telescopes both on the mainland, like [Madrid Deep space communication complex](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Deep_Space_Communications_Complex) which is vital for NASA’s interplanetary missions; but especially, on **the Canaries**.

    Because of their low latitude, high elevation and low moisture, they make for the perfect spot to build: telescopes!

    And there’s lots of them.

    There’s 15 in [el roque de los muchachos observatory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_de_los_Muchachos_Observatory) in la Palma.

    They study everything from the surface of the Sun to black wholes and gamma rays.

    In fact, It was here that the black whole in the centre of our Galaxy was discovered, in the william Herschel Telescope.

    their most impressive Telescope, though, is probably:

    The [Great Telescope Canarias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Telescopio_Canarias), the world’s largest single-aperture optical telescope. The scientific community has put great hopes on It.

    There’s also *another* world renowned observatory nearby: [The Teide observatory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teide_Observatory) with 11 telescopes.

    It was where COSMOSOMAS was designed. (As far as I understand, a new and more accurate method to look at the cosmic microwave background)

    Both are managed by the canary islands astrophisics institute.

    All in all, the Canary islands are one of the leading observatory sites in the world, along Hawaii and Chile.

    Plus, construction is still ongoing. The US is planning on building the TMT in the Canaries, following indigenous backlash in Hawaii. The Telescope would be an amazing win for the site. AfaIk It’s truly revolutionary, the kind that gets you **very significant** discoveries.

    Aside from “all of that”, we also participate in ESA.

    All scientific operations of the 12 ESA orbiting missions are managed from Spain. Actually, quite near from where i live, in Villanueva de la Cañada (near Madrid).

    The reason for such succes can be explained as such:

    We’re a developed country with high elevation, pretty dry climate, big mountains and decently low light polution in a very strategic location where there’s just not many good alternatives nearby.

    (These, btw, are also the reason for chiles and Hawaii’s succes)

  10. Space tech in Scotland is booming. We support ESA projects, we worked on one of the instruments for JWST, and we have a whole ecosystem of suppliers and designers of cubesats.

  12. France’s budget dedicated to space is the second largest one after the US. Most of it, +900M euros, goes to activities of the European Space Agency, so it’s pretty involved.

    The Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guiana is made available for launches and serves as “Europe’s Spaceport” basically. The largest space telescope was launched from there a few weeks ago, the James Webb Space Telescope.

  15. quite a lot for such a small and not rich country, there are like 50 companies + many subcontractors invloved in ESA projects + many of universities and research institutions. Some parts of Ariane 6 rocket are going to be manufactured here, like something with fuel system, the sequencer releasing satellites etc and many other things. Our country also often participate in some satellite equipment

  16. Turkey has a very ambitious (perhaps too ambitious) space program. It mainly focuses on small size satellites/satellite launchers. In the long run there are projects aiming for moon exploration, regional positioning systems etc. You can find more information on the program on TUA (Turkish Space Agency) webpage: https://tua.gov.tr/en/national-space-program

  17. From what I understand we’ve had architects who has been working on cheap inexpensive houses that could be assembled on places like Mars quite easily. Although I’d much rather we joined forces with Sweden and Norway and the rest of the Nordic countries and created our own space program if I’m being honest.

  18. We make some staff for satellites. We’ve the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex which helped to track the Apollo 11 program with the moon landing for example. Then we’ve got the astronomical observatory of Roque de los Muchachos in the Canary Islands, one of the few in the world with such characteristics (it’s the 2nd spot with the best visibility in the Northern hemisphere after Hawai). We’ve Pedro Duque as an astronaut who entered the ISS too. And of course we’re part of the ESA.

  20. Here in Sweden we have a launching plattform in Kiruna in the far north with a resesrch institute next door which collaborate with countries in Europe and America to launch small Satellites.

  21. Italy has its own space agency that participates in the ESA both in economic terms (it is the third largest counterpart after France and Germany) and in terms of actual missions. The Italian Space Agency has participated in several missions such as Cassini-Huygens and Rosetta, to name but a few.

  22. Among other things “we” provided the Nazi war criminals who kickstarted the American space program.

  23. You forgot our contributions to the James Webb Telescope as well. I watched [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aICaAEXDJQQ) recently and somewhere in there, a logo with Austrian Aerospace pops up. [Here is an article in German](https://science.orf.at/stories/3210553/) about our contributions, for example the development of an infrared spectrometer that is on the telescope.

    Afaik, Austria has quite a few contributions, also for space suits I have heard.

    Edit: from the comments it looks like we’re all doing quite a lot for space tech here in europe, proud of us

  24. We have an elite army trained specifically for interplanetary warfare, called the space cadets.

  26. Poland, I don’t know much about this topic if it comes to us I think we pay something but not the needed price for having our own cosmonauts

  27. One cosmonaut that drives drunk nowadays. Well, he doesn’t anymore, they confiscated his licence. Still, a major embarassment.

    And also technology. I think there were Polish parts on some rover and they broke so they told the rover to hit them with a shovel and it worked again. Modern problems require traditional solutions. Identify problem -> Hit problem with shovel -> No problem.

  28. We mostly build and launch rockets, and also have a lot of scientists working in that sector

  30. I am unaware of anything of the sort, I mean I apparently went to a respected elementary school but the geography teacher there tried to convince me the moon landing was a hoax… Amazing teacher by the way, told us nobody in our class would ever succeed.

  33. In a very Luxembourg turn of events, we are building up a legal framework to reglement who gets what when and why from any resources harvested in space. Which is obviously important for future space exploration private firms since they want to be able to plan their profits which there is no legal framework for (since space profits don’t happen in anyone’s land).

  34. We provided Thomas Pesquet, French Guyana’s launch base as well as some technologies and satellite used in the ISS and other programs

  35. It has already been written Italy has its space agency and has contributed in space exploration.

    Sardinia which is one of the smallest populated regions in Italy has an Aerospace District since 2013, which cooperates with universities, aerospace industries and also space agencies like ESA. [https://dassardegna.eu/en/the-dass/](https://dassardegna.eu/en/the-dass/)

    On the island there is also the first and the only still active spaceport in Italy (Salto di Quirra Rocket Test Range), which tested rockets since the 1959 when the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and ITAF started a research program in the outer atmosphere using rocket-carried probes. Nasa has also operated in Salto di Quirra in the 1960’s launching some Nike-Cajun two-stage sounding rockets.

    European Space Agency carrier rockets engines (Ariane family, Vega, Zefiro) were tested in Sardinia too, where there is an infrastructure specifically built for space rocket testing.

    The Sardinia Radio Telescope, which is the 2nd fully steerable radio telescope in the world, after the Green Bank radio telescope in Virginia (US) also contributes in space exploration, being used by Esa and Nasa in the communication with the space probes.

    [http://www.srt.inaf.it/project/introduction/](http://www.srt.inaf.it/project/introduction/)

    The Aerospace District of Sardinia has also patented in 2021 an instrument which allows the growth of microalgae in the absence of gravity and in a CO2-satured Martian atmosphere with the purpose of providing food for astronauts and that of generating oxygen using the atmosphere of Mars.

    [https://www.crs4.it/news-view/a-new-patent-has-been-filed-for-human-space-exploration/](https://www.crs4.it/news-view/a-new-patent-has-been-filed-for-human-space-exploration/)

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