From October 25 to 29, representatives from Camart2 Materize and Innovation team as part of the Latvian space delegation coordinated by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), and also visited World Expo 2020 that was opened in October 2021. Latvian delegation participated in the space industry trade mission taking place during the exhibition "EXPO 2020 Dubai". The space trade mission took place in parallel with the 72nd International Astronautical Congress (IAC). The event gathered more than 6,000 representatives of the space industry from around the world, bringing participants up-to-date on developments in space academia and industry, as well as providing new opportunities for collaboration, contacts and potential partnerships.
The aim of the trade mission was to establish contacts with companies in the aviation and space industry, as well as to use EXPO as a global platform to network and develop various collaboration opportunities with the countries of the Middle East, promoting the development of Latvian space industry companies.
Representatives of ISSP UL’s Materize team Olga Bogdanova and Ainars Knoks participated in pre-scheduled business meetings with United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) industry and academic partners, for example, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) and University of Sharjah. They also visited IAC expo to meet the potential ISSP UL’s partners and customers.
Whereas, ISSP UL’s Materize team representative Ģirts Ozoliņs participated in Latvian delegation meeting at Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre and individual visit to Dubai Astronomy Group to discuss potential cooperation options in space related projects and showcase the new wavefront sensor technology from Laboratory of visual perception of ISSP UL. Ozoliņš also attended IAC technical session on “Advances in Space-based Communication Systems and Services” as well as visited IAC expo to meet with potential partners and customers of ISSP UL in space related projects on optical communication & space debris tracking.
Since in 2020 Latvia joined European Space Agency (ESA) as associate member state, the new calls for proposals for Latvian entities have been launched. As ISSP UL signed contract with ESA for new R&D project in optical communications field in 2021, the space industry has become one of the priorities and one of the potential focus markets for services offered by ISSP UL. Thus, the visit to IAC was important step for introduction of ISSP UL to the space industry and resulted in more than 40 new contacts of potential partners and customers mainly from the space industry.
Latvia was represented in Dubai by the Latvian Space Industry Association, SIA "2AM", "ALLATHERM", "EVENTECH", Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry, Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia, SIA "MISSION TECH" and Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center.
