New president of the Portuguese Space Agency appointed at General Assembly
Ricardo Conde has been chosen to assume the position of the President of the Portuguese Space Agency.
The General Assembly of the Portuguese Space Agency – Portugal Space has appointed Ricardo Conde as the organization’s new president. Ricardo Conde, who has held the position on an interim basis since September 2020, succeeds Chiara Manfletti, the first president of the Portuguese Space Agency.
The selection process began in October 2020 with an international call for candidates, and the choice was guided by a committee composed of Paulo Ferrão, former president of the Foundation for Science and Technology, one of the founding members of the Portuguese Space Agency; Miguel Bello, president of the International Atlantic Research Center – Air Centre; and the former and first president of the Portuguese Space Agency, Chiara Manfletti.
“It is with great honour and a sense of mission that I accept the appointment of the General Assembly of Portugal Space, continuing the work started in 2019 by my predecessor Chiara Manfletti, which will allow the Agency to proceed with the outline of major goals that will strengthen the capacity of the Portuguese space industry and research institutions operating in this sector,” says Ricardo Conde.
The newly-appointed president of the Portuguese Space Agency recalls the major programmatic challenges aimed at creating an agenda for the industrialization of the space sector, such as the launch of a constellation of earth observation satellites with high-resolution sensors. This establishes Portugal as a major operator in the field within Europe, enabling the creation of a policy of earth observation data – the so-called Digital Planet – which will lead to the strengthening of an ecosystem for the development of downstream applications to meet the country’s needs in the use of space technologies such as land management and maritime monitoring.
“This industrialization of the space sector – whether by developing capabilities at the level of micro-launchers, creating conditions that attract leading European companies or in the search for solutions in a space security sector, particularly in a future subject such as solving the problems of space debris, in which Portugal intends to occupy a leading position – will be fundamental to our repositioning in international value chains.”
Ricardo Conde, who joins the board of the Portuguese Space Agency in 2019, has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. He has been connected to the aeronautics and space sector since 1993, having participated in several national and international programs in this area, particularly in the Space and Earth sectors.
