Slovak companies and research institutions operating in the field of space had the opportunity to present their activities to German partners and identify opportunities for further cooperation.Despite the cancellation of this year's international event ILA in Berlin, a planned meeting was held between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency (SARIO). In addition to the representatives of the DLR and the German Aerospace Association BDLI, the German-Slovak Space Industry e-Meeting was also attended by representatives of six Slovak companies and two research institutions that are actively involved in this sector.In the beginning, the participants were addressed by the Deputy CEO of SARIO and the Head of the Investment Projects Department, Dominik Susa. He emphasized that the online meeting was another step in strengthening cooperation between DLR and SARIO, which was initiated at last year's IAC event in Washington. He also cordially invited all participants to the second edition of the Slovak Space Tech Day event, which will take place on 10 September in Košice.The activities of DLR were introduced by Ayilin Kilic, the regional manager for Northern and Eastern Europe. With almost 9,000 employees and 27 locations across Germany, the German Aerospace Center focuses, in addition to the space sector, also on aviation, energy, transport, security, and digitization.After the general introduction of the center, Dr. Rolf-Dieter Fischer, Head of Technology Marketing, took over. During his presentation, he brought closer various mechanisms of support and commercialization of startups and innovative projects. Within the above-mentioned six key areas of research and development, DLR thus acts as a bridge between research and market in Germany within the aforementioned areas.The DLR branch in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria, specifically its space research and development, was introduced by Robert Klarner, Coordinator of Technology Marketing. The area of more than 24 hectares cosists of 11 research facilities, which employ approximately 1,800 workers. At the same time, there are several spin-offs and technology companies in the complex, which work closely with DLR. During the presentation, Mr. Klarner focused on several inspiring projects of the center in areas such as Earth observation, satellite communications, and navigation, as well as space systems and robotics.The second part of the meeting was devoted to the presentation of the space sector in Slovakia. Michal Brichta, Team Leader for SARIO Diversification Services, provided an overview of this dynamically developing sector in the Slovak environment. SARIO agency actively helps Slovak companies to enter this sector and fulfills the role of a partner in connecting local companies with foreign partners.The final part of the meeting was dedicated to the presentation of six Slovak companies and two research institutions operating in the sector. A chance to intruduce themselves was used by Spacemanic (Jakub Kapuš - development and production of small satellites and satellite components), 3IPK (Juraj Zámečník - digital solutions in the field of the supply chain, maintenance and management processes for the aerospace, automotive and space sectors), Insolutions (Jakub Lajmon - development and testing of software solutions, services related to ground stations), There Geospatial Analytics (Daniel Levársky - solutions of geospatial analyzes using AI), Touch4IT (Lukáš Láni - development of software solutions for working with satellite data), RoboTech Vision (Matej Poliaček - robotics, AI, control electronics), as well as the Institute of Experimental Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Šimona Mackovjak - development of space hardware and various areas of space research) and the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics of Comenius University (Jiří Šilha - space debris monitoring, study of meteoroids).
