The Finnish Satellite Workshop is the biggest New Space meeting in Finland, as well as in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. It brings together space technology specialists, scientists and students to discuss current topics in a rapidly developing space field. The scope is set on New Space, small satellite missions, small satellite platform development, space science missions and instruments, Earth Observation and sustainable utilization of space, not forgetting also about collaboration and politics.
The event is organized by Aalto University’s Small Satellites Group of ELE, the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space, Finnish Remote Sensing Club and Business Finland with the support from VTT, FMI, NLS, SYKE and 23 other sponsors.
This year, the workshop gathered a record-breaking number of 500 participants representing 17 countries. The participants presented 160 abstracts which were organized in two tracks – Space and Earth Observation – in addition to vast poster sessions. Sponsor companies and research institutions had a chance to meet with potential partners at their booths and during social events in sauna.
The talks covered a wide range of topics, starting from fresh results of recently launched missions, such as BepiColombo, newly funded mission, such as Comet Interceptor and Hera, and future plans to launch hundreds of satellites and to travel outside the Solar System. A balanced participation from the space industry and research helps to establish and nurture a seamless collaboration in the region in order to support research-dense entrepreneurship, space technology development and Earth observation applications.
FORESAIL had a strong presence at the meeting. Jaan Praks presented updates of Aalto-1 missions, Rizwan Mughal presented the current status of FORESAIL-1, Rami Vainio told the audience about BepiColombo SIXS instrument’s first year in space and Pekka Janhunen contemplated in his talk whether large commercial space settlements are feasible in the future. The FORESAIL team had also numerous posters about the instruments that will fly onboard our CubeSats, the satellite development, propulsion and science.
Finnish Satellite Workshop 2020, Andris Slavinskis presesenting.