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This week: UCD space science graduate Cillian Murphy describes his work leading one of the two specialist groups on the team that runs Columbus, Europe’s laboratory on the International Space Station, and explains why most new recruits arrive straight from a master’s degree. A UCD student team has won Ireland’s first defence hackathon with a swarm of listening drones. Réaltra is taking its avionics to Bangkok with the EU Space Pavilion, and SUAS Aerospace is going to Bremen to look for partners for its planned Atlantic launch site. Three funding calls close in the next fortnight, starting with Research Ireland’s defence and space challenge on 29 October.

October 22, 2026

Ten years after finishing the space science master’s at UCD, Cillian Murphy spends his working days monitoring the European part of the International Space Station. He leads one of two specialist groups on STRATOS, the team at the Columbus Control Centre near Munich that operates Columbus, the laboratory module Europe owns on the ISS.

“Whatever you picture when you think mission control in Houston, ‘we have a problem’, 100 screens in front of every person in the room, that’s exactly the right idea,” he told SpaceTech Ireland.

STRATOS looks after the module’s five systems: power, thermal control, life support, data management and communications. Murphy is the specialist lead for the last two. “Our core objective is to facilitate science and to keep the crew safe and productive,” he said. The team listens to the astronauts but leaves talking to them to the flight director.

Most recruits arrive straight from a postgraduate degree. A master’s in any STEM subject is enough to apply, because everyone is trained from scratch.

“This is such a unique and specialised job that it doesn’t really matter what your background training is,” Murphy said. “I would have thought, oh, I need 20 years of manager experience and who knows what, but you can actually walk straight out of university and into this job.”

After a physics degree with space science and astronomy at UCD, Murphy finished the MSc in 2016 and spent a year trying to get a PhD place in planetary science, then still a small field. When that failed he fundraised for the Red Cross, then took an R&D engineering job at a biofuels refinery in Hungary. “It was nothing to do with space yet,” he said.

A friend in Ireland told him about the national traineeships with the European Space Agency (ESA), funded through the Irish Research Council, now part of Research Ireland. That led to two years at ESA’s astronomy centre outside Madrid, working on data from Gaia, the space telescope mapping the positions of stars in the galaxy.

“A lot of my career has really come down to luck. The right opportunity shows up at the right time and the right contact reaches out.”

The STRATOS job came through unpaid work. Murphy volunteers with the Austrian Space Forum, a non-profit that runs simulated Moon and Mars missions on Earth, and is now one of its flight directors. His future boss at the Columbus Control Centre asked the forum’s flight directors to recommend someone, and they named Murphy. “I have the job that I have because of that connection,” he said. He has been on the team for just over four years.

Part of the training for Columbus is at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where new controllers take some of the same introductory classes as NASA astronauts and work through problems in a full-scale mock-up of the station.

“The team is only 14, 15 people and we lose about four of those every year, and we reliably have two people to train every six months,” he said. Many leave for senior jobs in ESA’s space station programme. Murphy himself is leaving soon to become operations manager on a new project, and Spanish company GMV is recruiting for the team (see Who’s Hiring).

The UCD master’s “covers every aspect of the space industry at a high level, so you get a bit of an insight into how every different piece of the machine works.” Several classmates wanted more technical depth. No course, however, prepared him for “the admin, how to go through all the paperwork of a real job, how to go through the team relations of a job.”

Murphy applied to ESA’s last astronaut selection, which drew about 22,000 applicants for six places, and did not get through. He plans to apply once more before reaching the upper age limit, set at 50 last time, but advises others not to build their plans around it.

“Don’t make your life revolve around trying to be an astronaut. Do something that keeps you in the right space, gives you the right tools, prepares you in the right way. But be happy with what you’re doing.”

His advice to anyone starting or finishing university was to choose work they want to do:

“The last thing you want is to live 50 years of your life doing something you absolutely hate. Following what you love opens doors and creates those opportunities because people see that motivation that you bring to it.”

Réaltra Space Systems Engineering will exhibit at Thailand Space Expo 2026 in Bangkok next week as one of about 20 European companies on the EU Space Pavilion. The Dublin firm will show off its space avionics, the onboard electronics that control and monitor launchers and satellites.

Its stand is supported by CASSINI, the EU programme that helps space start-ups and smaller firms reach new markets. Réaltra was the only Irish company among the 21 selected for the seventh batch of the CASSINI Business Accelerator, which runs from May to October 2026, and attended the programme’s Entrepreneurship Days in Prague at the start of this month. It told SpaceTech Ireland that Prague was its first structured approach to European institutional investors.

🚀 A UCD student team has won Ireland’s first defence hackathon, held at DCU:Innovate Hub from 15 to 17 October as one of eight simultaneous EU Defence Innovation Scheme events across Europe. Their network of low-cost drones uses microphones to detect activity on the ground and works without satellite positioning. The 120 participants also included spacetech start-ups, and the Department of Defence set a challenge on using satellite data to protect Ireland’s subsea cables. The team now joins a two-month EU mentoring programme.

🚀 SUAS heads to Bremen. Cork-based SUAS Aerospace is using Space Tech Expo Europe in Bremen next month to look for propulsion developers, launch operators, technology partners and investors for its planned rocket engine test site and launch facility on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. In 2023 SUAS joined EU-BEST, a €4.9 million Horizon Europe consortium developing standardised engine and rocket-stage testing equipment, where it acts as the secondary test location. It has not yet announced a site.

Enterprise Ireland formally launched Startup Ireland, a cross-government programme that brings the State’s start-up supports under one roof, on 13 October. Its headline money offer is a new National Company Accelerator, which will invest €100,000 in each participating company to help it grow and expand abroad. A separate Talent Accelerator will help experienced people with no company or idea yet to test opportunities, set up a company and move towards pre-seed investment.

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Research Ireland: Up to €220,000 for defence and space research
Research Ireland’s Defence Innovation Challenge, run with the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces, includes a category for space-based situational awareness and security. It is looking for new uses of satellite and geospatial technology in surveillance, analysis and the resilience of services used by both defence and civilian operators.

Teams can receive up to €220,000 over two development phases, and the strongest project wins a further €1 million prize. Applications must be led by researchers at eligible Irish research institutions.

Deadline: Thursday 29 October 2026, 1pm Irish time.
→ Research Ireland: Defence Innovation Challenge — details and applications

ESA Kick-starts: Up to €75,000 for satellite-based business ideas
ESA’s Kick-start programme funds six-month feasibility studies for new services built on satellite communications, Earth observation or navigation data, in areas such as agriculture, energy, maritime monitoring and logistics. The aim is to test whether an idea works technically and has a market.

ESA covers 75% of eligible costs, up to €75,000 per project, and takes no equity. Applicants need national funding authorisation. Applications are open all year and assessed in batches.

Next deadline: Friday 30 October 2026, 12 noon Irish time.
→ ESA Kick-starts: Full details and applications

ESA funding for Arctic navigation and safety services
Melting sea ice is opening new Arctic shipping routes, along with new hazards. ESA is seeking proposals for satellite-based services covering ice monitoring, route planning, search and rescue, and maritime surveillance, using Earth observation, satellite communications or navigation data.

Funding covers 50–80% of eligible costs, depending on company status and national approval, with no equity taken. Irish firms in maritime monitoring, satellite data analytics or communications are likely candidates. Proof-of-concept studies and pilot projects are submitted through ESA’s Activity Pitch Questionnaire; Irish applicants should check national authorisation requirements.

Deadline: Thursday 5 November 2026.
→ ESA: Arctic Region — Safety, Navigation and Operations

PICTURE: A Chinese private space company launches a small rocket from a ship at sea. Earlier this week, Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1S lifted off from a floating platform near Rizhao on the Yellow Sea in eastern China, and successfully put an Earth-observation satellite into orbit. Sea launches let companies choose the best ocean location for a particular orbit without needing a fixed coastal pad, and they keep the noisy, high-risk first few minutes of flight far from population centres. The Ceres-1S is a compact, solid-fuel rocket designed for small satellites. This was its seventh consecutive successful sea launch since 2023.

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

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