Luxembourg: “The best investment in space history”
April 25, 2023
The Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) organisation, in a revealing podcast, looks at the role of Luxembourg in space and satellite activity. Luxembourg is the home of SES (founded in Luxembourg in 1985) and the tiny country has more recently has been the official domicile of Intelsat.
In its Better Satellite World podcast, SSPI’s Lou Zacharilla (MD/Innovation & Development) speaks with Marc Serres, CEO of the Luxembourg Space Agency about Luxembourg’s remarkable space innovation and investment ecosystem, from how it came to be to where the nation sees its programmes headed next.
Before becoming CEO of the Luxembourg Space Agency in 2019, Serres served as Director of Space Affairs at the Ministry of the Economy and as coordinator of the relations with the European Space Agency at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
Serres says in the podcast: “Luxembourg has always depended on specific economic sectors, and those who know Luxembourg know that today, the financial services represent a very big part of our economy. I think we really depend on that. It’s more than 30 per cent of GDP, and a large part of that was the steel industry in the sixties, which has nearly completely disappeared now.”
He adds: “This was a strong motivation to continue diversifying the economy in Luxembourg. Since the 1980s, space has been an opportunity that has been identified. And our government has really given a new dynamic to it.”
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