YEESS: The new “space virtual enterprise, larger than any other space enterprise in Europe, who did not exist 5 years ago”

Space is not a big place, neither our planet Earth. It looks an oxymoron, but the reality shows that the Low Earth Orbits are now considerably crowded, having grown from 1500 to over 8200 (UNOOSA, Jan22), out of which nearly a half belong to a single US constellation, Starlink.

That is why the European Commission and ESA decided to launch the IRIS² constellation, an attempt to reserve the sovereignty and voice of Europe into the game, going beyond secure communications and including Earth Observation and GNSS as additional fundamental services that will differentiate the EU operation.

Since the Lisbon 2000 objective (3% devoted to R+D+i), Europe keeps repeating itself its strengths in research capacities (now 3^rd in the world after China and US), and its weaknesses in technology transfer (TT), with poorer results in entrepreneurship. Mazzucato (“The entrepreneurial State”) proposes to change this perspective of poor TT into the analysis of the industrial infrastructure, its behaviour, its readiness to invest in technology as well as the purchase policies and practices of the public institutions.

Recently ESA has awarded 9 Copernicus Contributing Missions that soon will be disclosed, showing a new attitude towards the opportunity, pointing at new players with high potential.

And The European Commission has dictated the rule of 30% SME content in the aforementioned IRIS² open competition.

But is this willingness to push the European Space SMEs corresponding to an industrial reality?

Otherwise, it could be a lost effort.

In a truly bottom-up, continuous and open process, the most promising European Space SMEs have grown the Young European Enterprises Syndicate for Space, YEESS. If we imagined this perimeter of activities as a single virtual company, we could show the leadership of YEESS in a robust set of technologies and services like space deployers, rockets, motors, thrusters, antennas, RFI, optical cameras, EO full solutions or launch services, amongst others. They are provided by companies that successfully sell those technologies outside Europe. This catalogue can hardly be found outside YEESS, especially with the dominant focus into small satellites.

Furthermore, the majority of our members are Gazelle companies (as defined by Eurostat), who have arrived at over 900 jobs, mainly highly skilled engineers, that did not exist 5 years ago, who exist based on new private investments and who take growth as a strong commitment with all stakeholders. This segment represents the vast majority of the growth and new employment of the space sector.

Not many other initiatives, from various economy sectors, can provide this given to new generations in Europe. Our common destiny, through various countries in Europe, is also a destiny of employment, technology, space challenges and adventure.

But this initiative requires continuous attention, care and intelligence, in other to have an international consolidation that keeps the aggressive growth rate.

Soon YEESS will provide its publication from its observatory of business data, offering those evidences as a best practice for companies and institutions.

And therefore, the initiatives like Copernicus Contributing Missions or IRIS² are a must that makes YEESS sustainable. Thank you for these bold steps.

Juan Tomás Hernani

President of YEESS

The YEESS syndicate is an alliance of young European space entreprises at the service of Europe. YEESS entreprises are agile and available to reinvent our transportation on Earth and to Moon and Mars.

New space is not new, but continues to be new every day, with a momentum fed by the convergence between a growing demand for data, a decrease of costs and an increasing role of software in the value chain.

New actors are entering space based businesses by the day, generating neo dreams and new realities, sustaining a momentum of changes in the entire space sector, young enterprises and legacy companies, private investors and public institutions. These changes are not proper to space, but space contributes more and more all changes which affect our lives, for the good or for the bad.

However, in these changes, the image is different from the reality; lobbyists, commentators, promoters provide an image driven by their objectives rather than by the facts. In particular, Europe looks brighter and more successful from outside Europe than from Europe.

The lobbyists are more on the side of legacy companies and the commentators look more interested in weaknesses and failures than by strenghts and successes.

This is the reason why, I more than welcome the creation of the new platform, Young European Space Entrepreneur Focus, which will give the floor to young European entrepreneurs who will give directly their views about the global picture and how they change that picture.

In order to support this new platform, I shall sustain my connections with as many young European entrepreneurs as possible. They all bring a wind of change which will put Europe one step higher in space.

Mr. Jean-Jacques Dordain

Former Director General of the European Space Agency (2003-2015)

Member of the Advisory Board of the Government of Luxembourg on Space Resources