Reaching Stars (EN)

In n ovember 2012, Poland became the 20th member state of the European Space Agency, contributing about 30 million euro annually. This paved the way for Polish economic operators to faster develop space and satellite technologies by providing them with the possibility of full participation in the most of the Agency’s programmes. The dedicated support mecha nism for the Polish industry has been created by ESA (Polish Industry Incentive Scheme – PLIIS), which will be available until the end of 2019. By mid-2016 209 project proposals were submitted in PLIIS open competitions, of which 85 were approved for implementation with a budget of nearly 16 million euro. At the same time the Polish space governance struc- ture matured: in 2015 the Polish Space Agency was established and in 2016 a long-term stra tegy for development of the space sector was defined.