Portugal Space and ELEVEN team up to make Portuguese people look at the sky

The Portuguese Space Agency joined ELEVEN in the Constellation ELEVEN project, which connects Portuguese football stars to the stars in the sky. The objective of the partnership is to stimulate the interest of football fans — and the general population — in astronomy, in an association between football stars and the stars that light up the skies.

For the sports television channel, “the association between astronomy and humankind is historic: the stars were part of religious practices, were navigational aids and, above all, have fed human curiosity for many thousands of years” . Thus, “the connection between football and astronomy is, for ELEVEN, logical”.

For this reason, the Constellation ELEVEN project, which is available online, was created, consisting of 10 stars symbolically associated with an equal number of football players. Cristiano Ronaldo sponsors the star Polaris, the brightest star in the Ursa Minor constellation and one of the best known globally.

Any Portuguese person has the opportunity to sponsor a star simply by signing up on the ELEVEN website dedicated to the project. ELEVEN customers or those who currently subscribe to the channel will also be able to see European football stars up close in the UEFA Champions League final, which will take place in Paris. On ELEVEN’s social networks, various prizes will also be awarded until the final match.

The constellation will actually be visible in Portugal on the day of the UEFA Champions League final, which takes place on May 28.

“Few people are aware that they can only watch a football game because there are satellites that transmit the information, or that you can order a pizza on your cellphone to follow the match because we have positioning satellites [GPS]. Space technologies makes it possible to live our lives this way”, considers the President of the Portuguese Space Agency – Portugal Space, Ricardo Conde.

“Therefore, it is with satisfaction that we strengthen this relationship and join ELEVEN to make the Portuguese people to see stars. We believe that this connection will be an important instrument to awaken or consolidate the interest of the most varied audiences with the sky and that they will feel it as a place of human expression, where space technology contributes to our well-being and to the care of the planet and that can leave here for a future linked to space activities”, adds Ricardo Conde.

The Marketing, Communications and Partnerships Director of ELEVEN Portugal, Nuno Filipe Miranda, highlights that the ELEVEN Constellation is a way of “honoring the stars of Portuguese football and giving the possibility to all fans of this sport to unite in the same galaxy of ball aficionados.

With this partnership, Portugal Space and ELEVEN seek to open doors to many other projects that may arise linked to space activities, because Sports and Science can be linked.