EU Interreg BA KvarkenSpaceEco Project

KvarkenSpaceEco project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund in the framework of Interreg Botnia Atlantica program of the European Union. KvarkenSpaceEco started in the beginning of September 2019 and it will end in the end of June 2022. The project is lead by the University of Vaasa and it has nine (9) other partners in Finland and Sweden. KvarkenSpaceEco’s total budget is around 1.86 million euros.

KvarkenSpaceEco project aims to:

Raise regional space technology awareness.
Give basic space education at many levels.
Help the development of a long lasting ecosystem, which can utilize the new space economy and boost space-related business.
Demonstrate space technology use by establishing a ground station and a portal for satellite data and launching a cube satellite.

Project partners:

Regional Capacity Building

The “New Space Digital Economy Innovation Center” will implement a long-lasting regional economic development structure for space-based business and innovation, i.e. a Kvarken Space Center. The planned center’s primary objective is to support regional businesses to develop opportunities within the “new space economy” and commercialise existing space-based data. Factors have developed in the space industry that allow much less expensive processes to be implemented in space relative to the past.

To aid the region in taking a stake in these new economic activities as well as available data and services, the center will assure that an understanding of the latest technologies is available, along with the capacity to implement them. The center will share knowledge and implement demonstration projects to bring the regional businesses to the level needed.

An innovation Ecosystem

The goal of the project is to develop a long-lasting innovation center that will develop the necessary foundation to support “new space” business activities in the Kvarken region. Currently, the Kvarken region is not active in participating in space economy or space-based data utilisation. This is despite the vast opportunities of space data especially for the energy, forestry, marine and agriculture business domains. Space-based data enables various new services and may improve existing systems – it will bring added value to solutions and new revenue streams from encouraging businesses. An innovation center will change this status quo and assist the region to-begin and to-continue to participate in business opportunities within the globally developing “new space” economy.