The Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation and the School of Economics and Political Sciences of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens have announced a strategic agreement aimed at promoting research and industrial training and strengthening innovation and entrepreneurship in the space sector.
President of the CSEO, George Danos, said that the existing, long-standing cooperation between the organisation and the School of Economics and Political Sciences of the University of Athens is taking on a different form, following the signing of a memorandum of cooperation in Athens last week.
"As an organisation, we rely on education, and this cooperation will enhance that education. At the same time, however, we also have industrial training, because the space sector, a particularly strategic sector, needs industrial training," he noted.
"We will do this hand in hand and we see that the international dissemination of the organisation, which reaches hundreds of thousands of people, will be fully exploited. A united front between Greece and Cyprus, a united front of Hellenism, we will open up what we do to the international community," he stressed.
In innovation, which is the second pillar, we will work to promote innovation throughout Greece, Danos said, adding that the field of entrepreneurship will also be fully utilised to support young people and the creation of start-ups, a goal for which, as he said, a memorandum of cooperation was recently signed with the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
"In this way, we will support the business cluster, which was Cypriot and has now become international, and this achievement will take place at the Organisation's International Center, which is under the auspices of the World Space Organisation, where our high-standard infrastructure will be used to attract young people to this crucial field of space, which is the future of humanity," he stressed.
He also said that there will be research in multiple areas, in collaboration with the University of Athens, and that there are already a number of programmes that have yielded results in the field of space and, in particular, in the field of astronaut health by the Cyprus Institute of Genetics and Neurology, the main partner in health issues at the International Center implemented by the organisation.
In closing, he said that the World Congress to be held in Cyprus next November will bring together the two institutions with announcements and research, "embracing the international ecosystem in which all the leaders of the major space agencies will be present."
Dr. Dionysios Tompros, lecturer at the University of Athens and head of technology at the organisation, said that space and its applications are not something we need to create, but something that has already been developed since the 1950s.
"It is our duty, as it is the duty of every nation that wants to participate in the modern world, to expand into this field, just as we expanded in the same way into the air and, in ancient times, into the sea," he said.
He explained that he created a course on the geopolitics of space, which explains how events in the near space around us affect developments and the course of events on Earth.
"The space economy, which concerns the School of Economics and Political Sciences, will approach 1 trillion in the coming years. The entire industry, all the services produced, and related sectors have now become a product and are comparable to other services and products on Earth. We must prepare for this century where the atmosphere will no longer be our limit," he said.
"There are resources in celestial bodies, such as asteroids, from which we will need to extract basic metals in the future, such as copper or iron, in order not to destroy the environment here on Earth, especially in cases where surface deposits are depleted," he noted.
He added that, in collaboration with the CSEO, he has undertaken the construction of the first satellite that will receive images from Earth and expressed his hope that, with the help of NKUA and the governments of Greece and Cyprus, they will promote research programs that will benefit both countries, the organisation, and the University of Athens.
For his part, the Dean of the School of Economics and Political Sciences of the University of Athens, Nikolaos Eriotis, said that the university's goal with its presence in Cyprus is to expand research beyond universities.
He added that training courses will be organised through the Center for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning of the University of Athens, to further train existing professionals and familiarise them with new concepts.
"Space is the place we all want to be. It is the place we all want to end up. We believe it has a lot to offer us and we must find it. So we have joined hands and are going to look for it," he concluded.
(Source: CNA)
