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This week: Ireland’s new national space research strategy could be substantially in place by the end of the year, according to a member of the steering group drafting it. We also report on next steps after Monday’s space workforce summit in Dublin, Prof Lorraine Hanlon’s appointment to chair ESA’s senior science advisory committee, a record quarter for global space investment, and an ESA call for satellite services that protect Europe’s electricity grids. Plus Ireland’s 2027 ESA allocation, a UCD consultation on new EU space rules, and the latest jobs.

Work on a new National Space Strategy for Research is progressing, with a five-member steering group hoping to have it substantially developed by the end of 2026, according to Professor Caitríona Jackman of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Jackman, who sits on the group, told SpaceTech Ireland that it had recently met government representatives. The group is co-chaired by Professor Lorraine Hanlon of University College Dublin and Professor Niall Smith of Munster Technological University, and is working with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research Ireland and Enterprise Ireland.

“Fingers crossed,” Jackman said, the strategy will be “in a significant place by the end of this calendar year.”

The research strategy is separate from Ireland’s National Space Strategy for Enterprise, which covered 2019–2025 and has yet to be replaced. Enterprise Ireland had said last year that a successor would go to government by the end of 2025.

Hanlon, the steering group’s co-chair, told SpaceTech Ireland in a June interview that she wants the strategy to make the case for a national space research centre, on the scale of State-funded centres for AI and quantum technologies.

“We’ve never had such a call for space,” Hanlon said. “What we’re hoping is to push, through the strategy, to make the case to the Department for Higher Education and Minister (James) Lawless that space needs a national centre of that scale.”

In June, the government announced €39.8 million over eight years for a new national quantum research centre, led by Trinity College Dublin. It was one of seven centres awarded funding under a €460 million Research Ireland programme. Space was not among the fields selected.

The new strategy comes as Irish researchers and companies take on larger roles in European missions. Jackman is a guest investigator on BepiColombo, the European-Japanese mission to Mercury, and a co-investigator on JUICE, ESA’s mission to Jupiter’s icy moons.

Ireland joined ESA at its founding in 1975. Jackman cited Enterprise Ireland figures putting the return on the State’s ESA contribution at about seven to one.

She said funding needs to protect fundamental science as well as commercial work, and to run over longer periods. “You don’t build a space mission on a two-year funding cycle.”

She also pointed to space weather as a practical reason to invest in the science. In 2022, a geomagnetic storm caused 38 newly launched Starlink satellites to fall back to Earth. Similar events can disrupt power grids and commercial aviation.

“We can do a lot with a little,” Jackman said, “but we would just really reach our maximum potential if we had a little bit more support.”

Prof Lorraine Hanlon of UCD has been appointed Chair of the European Space Agency’s Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) for three years from 2027.

The SSAC is the senior committee advising ESA’s Director of Science on the agency’s mandatory science programme. That programme is the core budget every member state pays into, and it funds missions such as JUICE, BepiColombo and the planned LISA gravitational-wave observatory. The committee represents the views of Europe’s scientific community on which missions get built and how their data is used. It meets ahead of each meeting of ESA’s Science Programme Committee, where member states take the decisions.

Hanlon was nominated by ESA Director of Science Prof Carole Mundell and appointed by Director General Josef Aschbacher. She is Director of UCD’s Centre for Space Research (C-Space) and Full Professor of Astronomy at the UCD School of Physics. She has previously chaired ESA’s Astronomy Working Group, one of the groups that feed into the SSAC, and was the endorsing professor for EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite. At home, she co-chairs the steering group drafting Ireland’s new National Space Strategy for Research (see above).

Ireland’s space sector is to set up working groups to tackle the skills gaps identified in the Beyond the Horizon report, after a Space Workforce Development Summit in Dublin on Monday.

The summit was organised by Regional Skills, the Irish Space Association and Space Industry Skillnet. It brought industry, academia and government together in workshops to agree practical steps on the recommendations of what the organisers call Ireland’s first national space skills study.

Patricia Moore, co-founder and director of the Irish Space Association, said participants left with “plenty of homework”, starting with consolidating the priorities raised in the discussions. The plan is to set up working groups on the priority areas identified.

The report was published last December. It found systems engineering to be the sector’s leading skills pressure point. Commercial knowledge and the bid-writing skills needed to win ESA funding also came up repeatedly.

The organisers say the focus now shifts to delivering those actions and building lasting links between industry and academia. A fuller report will follow once the summit’s outcomes are published.

🚀 UCD is asking Irish space companies and researchers how new EU rules will affect them. The rules covered include the EU Space Act, the Digital Networks Act, and proposals on space funding, spectrum and cybersecurity, all still being negotiated in Brussels. The online consultation is run by UCD’s Network Intelligence and Automation Lab with C-Space. It takes about 12 minutes, and respondents answer only on the policy areas that affect them. The findings will be tested at an online workshop and published as Irish Space Industry Regulatory Priorities 2026 for Irish departments, regulators and EU stakeholders, timed to Ireland’s Council Presidency, which runs until the end of December. Take part here.

🚀 Ireland will allocate €29.6 million to European Space Agency programmes in 2027, up from €17.2 million this year, under Budget 2027. The money goes towards the €170 million Ireland committed at ESA’s ministerial meeting in Bremen last November, which runs to 2030. The funding is what lets Irish companies bid for ESA technology development and other contracts. The Government has not published a programme-by-programme breakdown of the 2027 allocation.

Global investment in space companies reached a record $20.8 billion in the third quarter of 2026, nearly three times the previous quarter's $7.4 billion, according to figures from Seraphim Space. Launch vehicles, satellite manufacturing and other space infrastructure businesses took most of the money. The US accounted for about 70% of global space investment in the first nine months of the year.

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ESA is seeking proposals from companies developing satellite-based services to help protect Europe's electricity networks against disruption. Working with ENTSO-E, the association of European electricity transmission operators, ESA is looking for solutions using Earth observation, satellite communications and navigation or timing data to monitor infrastructure, detect risks and improve grid resilience. Irish companies are eligible to apply. ESA offers non-dilutive co-funding of up to 80% of eligible project costs.

An information webinar takes place on 20 October at 11:00 CEST (10:00 Irish time). The first application window closes on 29 January 2027.

→ ESA: Space-Enabled Solutions for Resilient Grids

The EU Council has approved a €115 million programme, known as AGILE, to help start-ups and smaller companies develop emerging defence technologies, including adapting civilian technologies for military use. It could be relevant to Irish companies working in satellite communications, Earth observation, navigation and other dual-use space technologies.

The first funding call is expected in early 2027.

→ EU Council: AGILE programme

PICTURE: Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft is shown near Phobos, the larger of Mars’s two small moons. The mission, led by Japan’s space agency in partnership with NASA, ESA and the French and German agencies, will attempt the first landing on Phobos and the first return of material from the Martian system to Earth.

The mission launches Monday evening from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre (20:41 Irish time) and is expected to reach Mars in about a year. It will orbit Phobos, drop a small French rover onto the surface, then touch down itself to collect at least 10 grams of soil and rock. The samples are due back on Earth in 2031, landing in the Australian desert.

Next week: more funding, contracts, and careers in Ireland's space economy - delivered weekly.

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