The ESA Φ-lab Newsletter #16 | March 2025

NAVIGATING THE FUTURE OF EARTH OBSERVATION INVESTMENT

Dear Φ-lab community,

Innovation and investment in Earth Observation (EO) are thriving, and the ESA InCubed programme leads the way in this dynamic landscape. InCubed continues to empower companies across Europe, helping them turn bold ideas into market-ready solutions. Among its latest co-funded successes are AIX, FOREST-3 and SkyBee-1, launched in January 2025 from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

SkyBee-1, the first satellite of constellr’s HiVE constellation, just released its ‘first light’: the image shows Tokyo’s night-time heat distribution, giving building-level temperature insights with an unprecedented quality. The thermal contrast between various city elements provides deeper knowledge of urban heat distribution, which in turn supports smarter urban planning and climate adaptation, marking a major change in thermal intelligence for enhanced decision-making across industries.

Speaking of innovation in Earth Observation technologies, Φ-lab will be heavily represented at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, from 23 to 27 June 2025, in Vienna. Our Invest Office will participate in four different sessions: ‘Enhancement of EO products using advanced multi-instrument and multi-platform synergies’ will focus on the synergy of passive imagery with active vertical profiling of the atmosphere and hyperspectral spectrometry. ‘Commercial Earth Observation Missions: Embracing New Paradigms and Innovative Models’ will feature detailed examples of various business models, illustrating where public support is prevalent and where it is minimal or absent. Two other sessions will feature new approaches to support commercialisation and opportunities in the Earth Observation market, with a focus on GHG monitoring.

As the upcoming ESA Ministerial Council (CM25) approaches, InCubed will have a new element of focused on public-private partnerships: InCubed-3 will facilitate innovative large-scale commercial projects across various areas including EO constellations, platforms, value-added services, among others. New proposals can be either industry-initiated or ESA-initiated. The latter option is pursued when the market maturity of the proposal is very low in the short term, but it holds attractive long-term prospects, and the requested capability for development does not currently exist.

Strategic investment will ensure that Earth Observation remains at the forefront of addressing global challenges. The momentum is building, and exciting developments are on the horizon.

Stay tuned for more insights and opportunities coming soon!

Happy readings,

The Φ-lab team

LATEST FROM THE LAB

EARTH OBSERVATION TRAINING DATA LAB (EOTDL)

22 March – Co-funded by ESA Φ-lab, EOTDL is a new repository for finding high-quality and curated training datasets for all your Earth Observation, AI, deep learning, and machine learning needs – interactive and completely free.

13-14 March – Giuseppe Borghi, Head of the ESA Φ-lab Division, and Chiara Cocchiara, Senior Innovation Officer at ESA Φ-lab, were present at the 2025 ‘Hello Tomorrow’ Global Summit, in Paris, France. In collaboration with Hello Tomorrow, Φ-lab is hosting the Grand Marathon finals. The top three finalists, competing for significant funding to accelerate their journey to market success, presented their groundbreaking pitches.

12 March – The inauguration of the ESA Space High Performance Computing Environment (Space HPC) took place in ESRIN. Josef Aschbacher (ESA Director General) was joined by Renato Krpoun (ESA Council Chair), Simonetta Cheli (ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes and Head of ESRIN), Antonio Tajani (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy) and Teodoro Valente (ASI President). Φ-lab contributed with a research study about ice melting in Greenland, within ‘ISRIN’ – a project developed in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) which made use of Space HPC.

26-27 February – Φ-lab members Sabrina Ricci and Chiara Cocchiara were present at the AI Festival, in Milan (Italy), an event dedicated to the exchange of insights on innovation and exploring how AI can create impact in fields like Space and Earth Observation. Chiara Cocchiara, Senior Innovation Officer at Φ-lab, gave a presentation titled "Innovation meets Earth Observation”.

Talking to Earth: a first-generation AI digital assistant

A recent initiative funded by ESA Φ-lab focuses on creating an AI-powered digital assistant that allows users to access and explore complex EO data through a natural language interface. In the long term, the aim is to integrate this tool into digital twins of Earth, supporting decision-making in areas such as climate monitoring, disaster management and urban planning.

SeasFire, an ESA Φ-lab-supported initiative, uses cutting-edge deep learning algorithms to explore the spatio-temporal connections between Earth system variables and fire regimes, gaining valuable insights into predicting potential wildfires.

As the upcoming ESA Council at the Ministerial Level draws near, relive ESA’s strategy to advance Europe’s leadership in the global commercial Earth Observation market, discussed during the 2nd ESA Earth Observation Commercialisation Forum.

15 April – The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) will host an event at the ESA ESRIN headquarters dedicated to Italian companies. During this day, you will have the opportunity to explore current and future opportunities offered by the ESA InCubed programme, which supports companies with funding and technical expertise to develop sustainable products in the field of Earth Observation. Register by 5 April by filling out the form below.

5-7 May – This workshop on Foundation Models for Earth Observation and Earth Sciences aims to address these challenges by bringing together experts from AI, geospatial science, climate, weather and Earth observation communities. The goal is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, share the latest research and technological advancements, and discuss practical solutions for effectively integrating FMs into the Earth Observation and Earth Sciences ecosystems.

13-14 May – AI Week is an event dedicated to entrepreneurs, managers and startups who want to find out what Artificial Intelligence is and how to adopt it in their company. The 2025 edition will be held at Fiera Milano, Milan, Italy. Giuseppe Borghi, Head of the ESA Φ-lab Division, will be giving a presentation. Make sure not to miss our Φ-lab stand at the exhibition!

27-28 May – Organised by the European Commission under the auspices of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU, this year’s edition lands in Gdańsk, a thriving hub for space. The event will spotlight how businesses, governments, and society as a whole benefit from the EU Space Programme, featuring its flagship initiatives—Galileo, EGNOS, and Copernicus, GOVSATCOM/IRIS² and Space Situational Awareness (SSA).

4-6 June – We Make Future is an international trade fair on AI, Tech and Digital Innovation. As an accelerator of culture, education, and innovation, it operates as a tool in service of society, connecting Italy and the world.

23-27 June – With the climate crisis intensifying, the Living Planet Symposium 2025 emphasises transitioning from ‘observation to climate action and sustainability for Earth’. The event provides a forum to present and discuss the latest scientific findings and applications based on satellite data, and to review the contribution that data and technologies have made and could further make in addressing environmental and societal challenges.

This activity will bring together onboard AI, spacecraft systems, EO data and domain experts to design, implement, demonstrate and validate a pioneering AI-powered EO Virtual Constellation as a Proof of Concept. The EO Virtual Constellation concept - also referred as SensorWeb - will function as a distributed system of interconnected smart sensing nodes across space and ground.

The objective of this activity is to provide a significant methodological improvement in the field of AI explainability for EO, as well as its application to downstream applications in the field of rapid mapping of disasters and climate change. Another key output of the activity shall be the development of a state-of-the-art open-source AI model aimed to help end users/stakeholders with fast, accurate and trustworthy AI model outputs.