Energy, enthusiasm and business-savvy ideas were all flowing at SBIC Noordwijk at the start of February – this could only mean that it was time for the RSM Space Business Challenge 2024 to get underway! Every year, students on the Honours BSc course of the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University take part in the 2-day programme organised by RSM’s associate professors René Olie and Willem Hulsink.

The students are learning about innovation and entrepreneurship in dynamic ecosystems, such as the space sector, so what better place to come and make use of their excellent business and marketing ideas to the “clients” that set the space business challenges – ESA BIC Noordwijk incubatee Turtle Island Space, ESA Technology Broker-appointed prize winner ZemQuest, LDE Space for Science & Society, NL Space Campus and SBIC.

Dutch space tech on the agenda

The first day of the RSM Space Business Challenges 2024 began with presentations by representatives of the Dutch space network and entrepreneurial ecosystem to give an introduction of the space industry This event is an engaging way to broaden knowledge about businesses in the space sector, which many of the 40 business students may never have had any contact with before. Though, it was apt that on this day in question – Thursday 8 February – Dutch space tech was making the news. That very morning, the NASA climate satellite PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) had launched from Cape Canaveral with an Dutch space tec on board. The instrument, built and developed in the Netherlands, will measure aerosol particles in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Read more about the Dutch instrument launched on the NASA climate satellite here

This important contribution to climate research is one example of how Dutch technology is being used in space, as explained by Martijn Leinweber (COO of SBIC Noordwijk and the ESA BIC programme manager) in his introduction to the student delegation. He explained about the startups that use space technology for upstream or terrestrial applications, which can have benefit for life on Earth. Here, in the Dutch business incubation centre of the European Space Agency, there are entrepreneurs developing innovative solutions. For example, Meteory is making environmental data more accessible – and working on real-world applications of satellite data for a more sustainable world – and Turtle Island Space (one of the challenge setters) is offering educational packages that give students experience of controlling a ground station (like the one on-site at SBIC Noordwijk) and downlinking their own satellite imagery.

Educational challenge: Identifying new customer segments was the focus of the challenge set by Turtle Island Space. The startup, headed-up by founder Brian Treacy, is currently incubated at ESA BIC Noordwijk and is already working to supply universities and space agencies with educational services. The company’s public outreach initiatives will allow students to get access to practical and affordable experiences relevant to the space industry through e-learning. turtleislandspace.com

Fresh perspectives

Every year at this event, a new cohort of students are assigned tasks covering the commercialisation of academic knowledge and designs by research centres, universities, R&D-based companies, startup firms and established companies in the space business cluster. The varied assignments that student teams could be invited to work on include:

• Analysing business opportunities in space and non-space markets
• Developing market communication strategies for different customer groups
• Helping companies and organisations to optimise their business models
• Developing ideas on how to add value for customers
• Collecting best practices from other industries

The students are provided with a dynamic and practical learning experience that prepares students for the challenges and opportunities in the evolving space industry. For the companies in this entrepreneurial ecosystem, the opportunity to work with such ambitious and bright bachelor students can offer a fresh perspective on their business and organisational initiatives.

Challenges set: countdown to final presentations

This year, there were 8 challenges set, which covered innovative space tech solutions related to education and energy, among others. The challenges were offered by Turtle Island Space and ZemQuest, as well as LDE (Leiden–Delft–Erasmus universities), ESA BIC, the ESA Technology Broker NL, NL Space Campus and SBIC Noordwijk.

On the afternoon of day 1, the students were split into groups to work on the challenges. It was at this point that the teams dispersed around the SBIC hub to really dive into their assignments. The buzz of creativity was abundant – in the atrium, on the couches behind the satellite, in every meeting room and upstairs in the new Spark Hub – as the students began their research and put in place a plan of action. This included holding several interviews with various representatives of the challenge owners for the 2 days.

Energy challenge: Green energy was the focus of one challenge from ZemQuest, when students were asked to deliver a market penetration strategy for electric vehicles suitable for a key regional location, such as Schiphol airport. The Leiden-based company is working to bring emission-free and sustainable electrification for industrial mobility and long-range electrical aviation with aluminium–air batteries, which could be used for space applications. The batteries are also an economical alternative to diesel, for the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles, and the company aims to offer full-cycle infrastructure and service. zemquest.com

With a focused determination, the student teams worked quickly and efficiently so that, on the Friday afternoon, they could present their findings and recommendations to all the clients and the accompanying delegation in a plenary session. This exchange allowed students to apply theoretical concepts learned in the classroom to practical, industry-specific problems, enhancing their understanding of how academic knowledge translates into real-world applications.

Fruitful collaboration

Taking to the stage to present their solutions gave the students the chance to highlight new marketing and business potential for every challenge owner. The dedication and creativity of these students was remarkable and made a lasting impression on everyone present.

“I was in awe at the speed of how these talented students got to grips with the challenge and how they managed to identify a promising new market that we will be investigating further,” Brian Treacy (founder of Turtle Island Space) enthused. “It was refreshing to work with people 10 years younger than I am and from a different field.”

David de Haas, chief marketing Officer at ZemQuest, was also enthusiastic: “We were impressed to see these students tackle the complex challenge of devising a go-to-market strategy for our aluminum batteries at Schiphol airport. We see a bright future for these keen young minds and look forward to welcoming them to join us on our quest for zero emissions.”

Focusing on the successful ongoing collaboration with RSM Erasmus University, Martijn Leinweber (COO of SBIC and programme manager of ESA BIC) commented: “The interaction of the students with the startups was complementary and, once again, new perspectives emerged that can be implemented into business ideas. We are already looking forward to see what will emerge from next year’s event.”

Companies interested to set a business challenge at the next event, get in touch.

ABOUT ESA BIC NOORDWIJK: In the ESA BIC programme, space startups get up to €60,000 zero-equity funding for the development of their idea, receive technical support by ESA or partners and get extensive business support by SBIC. esa-bic.nl

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Meteory’s software leverages advanced data analytics and machine learning algorithms to help businesses and organisations better understand their environmental impact and identify opportunities for improvement. The company’s products enable users to track, plan and assess, with an unrivaled understanding of their evolving environmental landscape.

Alexandre Larroumets, co-founder and CEO of Meteory, emphasised: “Securing this funding underscores the urgency of real-time environmental insights. At Meteory, we’re driven to innovate relentlessly, shaping the way we understand and engage with our environment. This investment round confirms we are on the right track to making a big impact.”

Pierre Blanchet, co-founder and CTO of Meteory, added: “We are dedicating our life to fighting the climate crisis and this investment is proof of what has been done and what is coming next. Meteory will make it easy for decision-makers to know what is happening on their territories.”

Empowered with robust data, Meteory can strategize and implement measures based on accurate and reliable insights. With this new funding, the Dutch startup plans to accelerate the development of its software platform and expand its commercial proposition. They are committed to helping local public entities and private organisations to reach their sustainability goals.

Tommy Hurley, Managing Partner at Shamrock Ventures, is thrilled with the investment: “Meteory’s innovative approach to environmental sustainability is exactly the kind of investment opportunity we seek. We believe in the potential of their technology to accelerate the progress toward carbon neutrality, and we are excited to support them as they continue to grow and succeed.”

Through the use of the platform, Meteory’s partners can now monitor environmental indicators at high frequency, high resolution, and with decades of archive data. This significantly enhances their ability to track progress towards carbon neutrality, enabling the identification of opportunities and risks within their territories.

This news was originally published on the EU-Startups website on 13 July 2023.

Open call for startups with space business ideas to apply to ESA BIC Noordwijk:

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We chatted to founder Surajeet Bhuinya to find out what DataPebbles can offer to our community. At the outset, in relation to processing the date from satellite images, he emphasises the need for efficient machine learning models – and, importantly, a quick and continuous approach to put them into production and get validation. It is the overview of such data in combination with local monitoring on Earth that can gives an added value and in the long run contribute to sustainable actions for the planet.

What is at the heart of your business? 

At DataPebbles, we advise on technological choices and architecture, provide complex data processing and dashboard solutions, and assist and advise on machine learning model development. In essence, we provide software engineering best practices and end-to-end data solutions. So, we don’t just work with a certain part, like only creating a visualisation report or only formulating a machine learning model, but we do everything.

How can you help our community?

We want to help startups reach their goals. These startups might not have expertise in all technologies required for big data. Whenever you talk about a machine learning model, the data is not just creating the model that works on the laptop. It also has to have the ability to scale and that is the kind of skill that we provide. At DataPebbles, we try to help our partners to be more sustainable. It’s not like that from day one they should be focusing on producing efficient code. We can come in and help them to get started with that. Then, slowly we help them to also develop these skills to continue on their own in this area. So, that’s the kind of relationship I want with the startups. We work with them and help them to reach their goals faster. Importantly, they only get help up to a certain level, after which they continue growing in that space by themselves. We don’t have to do all the basic things, as they should be able to do this over a period of time.

What approach do you and your team take?

We start with a discussion: you tell us your problem and we will talk more about your data and try to understand the data from your perspective. From that data, we generate the features required to create a machine learning model. The model, after evaluation, testing, etc., is then deployed in production, after which we help you to support all this pipeline. Everything is done in a very cloud-native way and that’s where our end-to-end offering comes in, because it’s very difficult to find people who have knowledge of the cloud platform Kubernetes (an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management) and we have that knowledge and expertise. You don’t need to master it.

What recent developments in your company will benefit the SBIC community partnership?

Our team is experienced in machine learning operations (ML ops) and our focus area is creating qualitative training data sets for machine learning models, which we offer via an online platform. This platform has aspects of a responsible AI development with already in-built features that are: compliant; explainable; and ethical. For compliance, you can create rules that set certain boundaries. In relation to the explainable aspect of the platform, we do all data quality checks and are transparent in relation to the recommendations the system makes for the attributes used in the training data set. In terms of ethicalness, we can show aspects of the data that helps anybody to understand whether it’s biased or not. In future releases of the platform, there will be more features available in all the three verticals.

What technical support can the ESA BIC startups make use of?

There are two propositions that we have for startups. The first is to provide support to build their platform or whatever model they require for their applications from a pure data perspective. So, we can come and help that startup in terms of engineering augmentation. We can also help them if they need expertise for a one-time job for a data engineering solution. This first proposition is more like a consultancy and partnership to support them to reach their goals.

The second is more of a long-term relationship and includes our own responsible AI data platform, which the startups can make use of to create their own machine learning models. They can decide how much or how little they make use of the platform, as it’s designed in a very modular way with three parts in the same platform – it’s more like LEGO bricks and you choose which components to make use of. If you are just interested in doing data transformation to see how the data looks, you can use that part of the platform – or if you just want to ensure that your data is good quality and extract visualisations, you would use the verification module. Then, there is the part that covers the machine learning model. Here, you can opt to do some feature engineering to create your training data set and to train the model. So practically, if you have good knowledge of your data, you can sign up to our platform and say, “I know this is the data set and I want to create this model. I know the algorithm but I don’t have cloud servers to run this algorithm or the expertise of doing the data preparation analysis. And I don’t know how to run an API to serve my model.” If you recognise yourself in this scenario, our platform is the best fit – it is very user friendly and you can input your queries in a very non-technical way.

Can you help with setting up data toolsets?

Yes. Some startups might need help to set up their first data computation framework. These data toolsets can be small or big, it doesn’t matter; it can be in the cloud or it can be local. They can use these data toolsets without learning how to implement them, as that’s where we can help out. And that’s why the data pipeline comes into the picture, because once you have the pipeline ready, you don’t want to recreate the same thing again – everything should be automated. So, once it’s there, you can keep on using it.

What’s the first step for our startups to reach out?

We are a team of six people based in Leiden and I will be the first point of contact for any of the entrepreneurs wishing to make use of our technical support. My team generally likes to focus more on the problem set and that’s why the structure is like this – it’s very flat to be very honest. I’m on the front layer and then everybody is on at the same level as me. So, I’ll have a first meeting with the startup to see how we can help and then make a plan, which I’ll next discuss with my team for everyone to give input about the various options. It is a two-way, collaborative process and any startup is welcome to come to our office and sit with the team and chat with them directly. It has to be a joint collaboration and that’s the real partnership.

What draws you to our space business community?

I think it is interesting to know what these startups are doing. The more we interact, we can find out what the problems are and what challenges they face, and then we can provide solutions. I actually found out about SBIC by going to a talk by UbiOps (SBIC community partner) and that is where I met Alexandre Larroumets from ESA BIC startup Meteory, from whom I learnt more about the space business community in Noordwijk. All startups have different requirements but those that are not sure of the fundamental software side of things or have the experience to build a proper scalable environment like we do. This is the advantage for the startups – that they don’t have to have the knowledge themselves, they can get help and technical support from us.

Is it important that machine readable data is FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reproducible) for automated processing?

I think standardisation is very important. When I was in software world, I used to say that if you don’t want to keep on doing the same boring job, you have to automate it and to automate you have to have a standard. You cannot do automation on random things, you have to have a format. There are file formats for big data for a reason – because big data has moved from traditional databases towards being machine readable and capable of being interlinked with other data in knowledge graphs (i.e. organising information in a structured way by explicitly describing the relations among entities), etc. The data is the core, which is immutable. So, you can change the data, but it only creates a new version of it. That’s the advantage of big data revolution – that with modern data stacks, we create data as separate entities. You can read it the way you want to. The file format is very efficient for big data operations, which is not possible using the basic software for data manipulations, like Excel. If you want to do automation, you need technologies that can deal with the growth of your data. I worked with companies where they had Excel formulae that took 2 days to run and create the report for compliancy; my team went in there and created automated jobs that took 6 minutes. It’s just the power of cloud computing.

How important is sustainability to you?

From my point of view, in the data world, automation is sustainability; it is the only way of establishing sustainable processes. Automation means you can free up your time, become more efficient and do away with rudimentary tasks – these tasks can be carried out by our platform. For the highly specialised tasks, of course you still need the right person in the right place. In my eyes, that is sustainability because you can keep on doing it.

From the environmental perspective, we need sustainability to be able to achieve our goals and this is accelerated through innovation. Of course, there are different way of looking at it, but looking to space is a good start because of the innovation that happens there in particular relating to the space tech required for resilient products, which can survive just about anything.

What prompted your interest in space?

I am very interested in how these startups are using space technology for our benefit here on Earth, as we need to look after the planet. When I was younger in India, we used to go to the northern region near the Himalayas where it was so dark and I would just sit and watch the constellations. I am also really drawn to the moon, with it being the clearest celestial object visible to the naked eye. It really puts things into perspective and makes me realise about what we have on Earth. We have everything we need here and yet people are trying to get to Mars. I think space tech should be used for making our Earth a better place rather than just finding a different planet [to live on]. I feel strongly that we should first see what we can do here and how we can help this world. That’s why I’m interested to find out more about how the startups’ solutions aim to solve terrestrial problems using satellite imagery and data.

The ESA BIC incubatees can join the DataPebbles info session on September 12 to discover all about the technical support available to the space business startups.

We can confirm that having a chat by the satellite at SBIC Noordwijk is great for networking – here is Surajeet of DataPebbles talking to Sean of ESA BIC startup Ecosmic at the May 2023 Network & Drinks community event.

Getting in touch with DataPebbles

Contact: Surajeet Bhuinya
Email: sbhuinya@datapebbles.com
Website: datapebbles.com

[Datapebbles stopped as technical partner in mid-2024 & continues as community partner]

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