Between 9 and 10 January 2014, the President and CEO of the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA), Marius-Ioan Piso presented Romania's strategy and position on space exploration at the Heads of Space Agencies Summit (HOSA), organized by the International Academy of Astronautics in Washington. Together with the Minister Delegate for Higher Education, Scientific Research and Technological Development, Mihnea Costoiu, the CEO of  ROSA attended the International Space Exploration Forum (ISEF), organized by the Government of the United States. At the event, Marius-Ioan Piso expressed Romania’s interest to develop research and space exploration projects through bilateral and multilateral cooperation that will contribute to the national development of Romania.

On 10 January 2014, Marius-Ioan Piso participated at the IAA Heads of Space Agencies Summit on Space Exploration, which gathered over 30 leaders of world space agencies to debate ways and opportunities for international collaboration, as well as other topics connected with space exploration, such as its economic benefits.

Romania has participated in over 40 space missions with instruments, experiments, expertise and even a cosmonaut. Romania is the second former communist country to become an ESA Member State, and the Romanian Space Agency has recently celebrated 18 years of activity as an independent organisation. Nowadays, Romania participates in several scientific and technological missions such as: space mission Euclid, which studies the role dark energy and matter play in the evolution and expansion of the universe, space mission Gaia, which will map our galaxy in 3D, Proba-3 mission, the world’s first mission to use a pair of satellites that will fly together maintaining a fixed configuration, as well as in space exploration missions such as Exomars. The CEO of ROSA stressed the importance of international collaboration for the success of such missions, as well as for protecting planet Earth from the threats that asteroids and comets present.

The President of ROSA, Marius-Ioan Piso participated at the “Space exploration: LEO and Beyond” round table session. LEO (Low Earth Orbit) missions include research on human health for long duration flights in harsh conditions and testing technologies to be used for missions going beyond.

Other participants in this round table were: Charles F. Bolden (NASA, USA), Jean-Yves Le Gall (CNES, France), Hu Yafeng, (CNSA, China), Luis Valero Artola, (Ministry for Industry, Energy and Tourism, Spain).

During the STAR 2012 project competition, coordonated by the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA), a research project was selected for funding the first phase of the RoBiSAT mission, developed by the Institute of Space Science (ISS). Among the mission objectives are developing and testing critical nanosatellites configuration flying technologies. In particular, ISS wants to study technological solutions for radio communication, data transfer and commands between two identical satellites on a Low Earth Orbit.

The RoBiSAT-1 project, funded by the STAR Programme offers support for developing a prototype CubeSat 2U nanosatellite  — dimensions 20 X 10 X 10 cm3.

RoBiSAT-1 and RoBiSAT-2 will be launched as part of the international collaboration QB50 — a constellation of 50 nanosatellites — and will include, in addition to the radio communication experiment, instruments developed by the QB50 consortium. This set of sensors will be integrated on board of all the other nanosatellites, which together will form a constellation of 50 mini-laboratories. These labs will measure the parameters of the upper parts of the Earth’s atmosphere in different locations, at different moments of time, offering unique data sets that will facilitate the monitoring of different processes in situ, as well as the testing and improving of current models. Romania will also actively get involved in the ground station network by making use of the infrastructure developed during previous projects.

The project team includes researchers and research assistants from the Institute of Space Science. The researchers group was formed based on the critical team trained for developing the GOLIAT nanosatellite and includes, in addition to the experienced researchers, master students who have recently joined the team.

Funded through an European FP7 project, QB50 is the first international collaboration to use professional nanosatellites for the study of an atmospheric area that we know little of. Romania is involved in this collaboration through the Institute of Space Science.

The Institute of Space Science (ISS) from Magurele, Romania, conducts scientific research in areas such as Astroparticle Physics, High Energy Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology and Space Plasma Physics. It also performs activities related to applied research, design and development of space technologies. ISS has been involved in collaborations and partnerships renowned both nationally and internationally (CERN-ALICE, FAIR, ANTARES, KM3NeT, Pierre Auger Observatory), in ESA’s space programme through space missions such as Euclid, Planck, Cluster and in the first Romanian experiment on board of the International Space Station.

The Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) together with the University Politehnica Bucharest (UPB) will host the Ninth ESA-EUSC-JRC Image Information Mining Conference: The Sentinels Era, between 5 and 7 March 2014. The event will take place at UPB, Main Library Building, Splaiul Independetei, 313, Bucharest.

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