The GAC Group team responsible for communication and dissemination for the CARIOQA-PHB project attended the “Rencontres du Spatial en Région Sud” event in Cannes on Thursday, 27 November. This annual event aims to bring together and strengthen the regional space ecosystem by fostering collaboration between industry, researchers, institutions, and innovators. It also seeks to promote new-space actors and support the emergence of long-term strategic projects.
CARIOQA-PHB communication team at “Les rencontres du spatial en région Sud”
The event brought together several partner organisations involved in the project, including CNES, Thales Alenia Space, and ONERA.
During the day, GAC attended a round table at which French state directorates, including DGA (Defence Procurement Agency), SGDSN (General Secretariat for Defence and National Security) and DGE (Directorate General for Enterprise), highlighted the importance of European collaboration in the space sector. They emphasised that strengthened cooperation is essential to maintaining Europe’s technical excellence and competitiveness — a perspective that is fully embodied by the CARIOQA mission, involving multiple European partners, including the French and German space agencies.
A second session dedicated to Earth observation also indirectly reinforced the relevance of the CARIOQA mission. During the session, climate scientists stressed the need for diverse and highly precise datasets to improve the accuracy of climate measurements. As a reminder, the CARIOQA mission aims to provide high-precision gravity data from space, contributing to improved monitoring of Earth’s system dynamics.
The day concluded with a focus on the importance of integrating end-user needs into mission design to ensure that space missions address real operational challenges. This once again aligns strongly with the CARIOQA mission approach, which, within the CARIOQA-PMP project, includes dedicated work on future data use and user engagement.
