ESTP - the platform for space technologies
The European Space Technology Platform (ESTP) aims to create a non-dependent technology portfolio facilitating European strategic independence for the access to and exploration in space, and to support the development of next-generation technologies best serving Europe’s ambitions in space-related sectors (Galileo, GMES, security, space exploration, broadband communications, etc.).
The ESTP has been set up building and expanding on the success of a pre-existing co-ordination and harmonisation effort (Technology Harmonisation/ESTMP) sustained by ESA and its Member States, national agencies, space industry and research organisations. The ESTP complements this effort in several strategic areas, along three main pillars on (1) non-dependence, (2) technology spin-in and multiple use, and (3) enabling technologies for EU Applications.
The ESTP's Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) conveys the results of the most extensive space technology coordination process in Europe, involving virtually all the space technology stakeholders since 2000.
The implementation of the SRA will mainly be based on the effort and commitment of its stakeholders: deployment of space technology will be, as it has been in the last 40 years, the major responsibility of ESA and national agencies. However, the new European challenge identified in the ESTP and mapped in its three pillars (plus additional coordination effort) will need to be duly supported through enlarged European institutional support, by European Community programmes and, in particular, by the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development (FP7)