Greece looks towards the final frontier

Greece is rightfully celebrated as one of humanity’s founding civilizations, with our advancements in areas like culture, philosophy, and architecture still relevant to this day. Likewise, our mythology has left a deep mark, something I was reminded of with the launch of NASA’s Orion rocket on November 16, a trail run for a new manned mission to the Moon, and beyond that, to Mars. This wider program is called Artemis, after the ancient Greek goddess of the Moon and the twin sister of Apollo.

However, Greece aspires to more than just providing the inspiration for the endeavours which will shape the future of human development – we want to play a much more active role. Space technology is an area that will increasingly shape the economy of the 21st century, and so it offers huge opportunities to countries that are able to harness its potential. In recent years we have been working hard to lay the foundations for Greece to expand its space sector.

This includes the establishment of the Hellenic Space Centre in 2019 tasked with the development of a national space strategy in collaboration with the academic and research community. The HSC also co-ordinates and mobilises public and private sector bodies to further strategy and participates in European and international space organisations and initiatives.

This hard work has increasingly been paying off – last year Greece signed a ground-breaking agreement with Amazon Web Services on economic and technology initiatives that aim to turn Greece into a regional space hub. It is the first such agreement that AWS, which has been expanding its global space presence, has entered. Under the agreement, Greece and AWS will collaborate on promoting Greece’s space economy and support measures to attract and train aerospace professionals, including via the AWS Activate program, which offers space start-ups tools and resources for using its cloud networking technology.

This year, in July, we were delighted to host the 44th Assembly of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in Athens. With over 2,000 scientists and most of the world’s major space agencies attending, COSPAR is considered the pinnacle of global space research and technology conferences, so hosting it in Athens was a welcome vote of confidence in our space sector and its prospects.

According to the Hellenic Association of Space Industry, the Greek space industry currently employs 2,500 people and has an annual turnover exceeding €185m, most of which comes from the export of Greek space products and services abroad. Greece’s space industry has achieved a significant level of technological maturity and has successfully participated in a dozen international space missions.

Given our enviable geographic location as the gateway to Europe from the Middle East and Africa, as well as our pool of highly skilled and digitally literate workers, Greece is a natural hub for space technology and innovation. I am confident that this will become an increasingly important and profitable sector for the Greek economy, and that just as Greece was pivotal in shaping humanity’s early history, we will continue to do so in future – perhaps even on Mars.