Lunar Space Economy The Future Is Now

Leonardo’s cutting-edge technology will aid interplenary explorations

Moon exploration is a key theme for space agencies around the world and for private entrepreneurs. The return to the lunar surface is a key factor

in the development of an interplanetary generation, that will protect humanity on earth, and in the future could also be called to guide us towards new places to live in outer space.

This is why Italy-headquartered global high-technology company Leonardo with the technical-scientific coordination of SDA Bocconi University, organised a dedicated event in Italy Pavilion during

the Expo 2020 Dubai Space Week.

As highlighted by Leonardo’s CEO Alessandro Profumo during the conference titled ‘The lunar space economy. The first step towards an interplanetary generation’: “Our collective ambitions in space also matter to our own planet and its future. Making interplanetary exploration more sustainable by using lunar resources is one aim. But there is a second goal: to improve our quality of life on earth”. Space could, in fact, offer fundamental resources that will be scarce or costly to earth’s environment. “Think about rare-earth elements for electronic devices, for example,” added Profumo. “There are also opportunities to advance science and technology in areas like power generation, energy storage, recycling, and advanced robotics.”

Exploration, mining and recovering technologies and potential solutions for a living habitat on the moon were some of the themes covered at the event by agencies and institutions, academia, industries, and astronauts, who discussed how to create synergies to make the equation ‘2+2=5’ work.

Leonardo can play a fundamental role in such a challenge, with an end-to-end offering for all users’ requirements: from space systems manufacturing, up to the production of a wide range of high-tech instruments, subsystems, sensors, and the management of launch and in-orbit services and satellite services. Leonardo’s space technology applications span from earth observation to the remote sensing of atmospheric phenomena and ecosystems, from planetary exploration to navigation missions, telecommunications, and in-orbit experiments.

The UAE space activities were a great protagonist of the international conference, with contribution from Hazza Al Mansouri, the first Emirati astronaut onboard the International Space Station, who spoke on a panel together with Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, and from Sara Al Maeeni, project scientist and communication engineer of the Emirates Lunar Mission. The UAE is rapidly becoming a spacefaring nation. After having reached the Mars orbits with the Hope Probe, the UAE will arrive on an unexplored location of the lunar surface in 2022 with the rover Rashid. The Emirates Lunar Mission is the first of a series of missions intended for developing new technologies that will eventually support missions to the martian surface, and address food, energy and water-security challenges back on earth.

Other speakers at the Leonardo event included: Bill Nelson, administrator at NASA; Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA; Giorgio Saccoccia, president of ASI; Paolo Glisenti, general commissioner’s office of Italy for Expo 2020 Dubai; researchers from MIT, INAF and Colorado

School of Mining; and professionals from mining companies.

Space could, in fact, offer fundamental resources that will be scarce or costly to earth’s environment.