Portuguese Space Agency is celebrating 30 years of POSAT-1
The conference 30 Years of PoSAT-1: The Past and the Future of Portugal in Space will celebrate the launch of the first Portuguese satellite with the technicians who designed and launched it. The debate, scheduled for 25 September at LNEC in Lisbon, will also focus on the future and the new satellites being developed in Portugal.
At 2.45 a.m. (Lisbon time) on 25 September 1993, flight 59 of the Ariane 4 rocket was launched from the European Spaceport in French Guiana. It represented the space ambitions of a country preparing to put a satellite into orbit for the first time.
In the 30th anniversary year of the launch of PoSAT-1, the first Portuguese satellite, the Portuguese Space Agency celebrates the date with the conference 30 Years of PoSAT-1: The Past and the Future of Portugal in Space. With this initiative, the Agency brings together, on 25 September, in the Auditorium of the LNEC Congress Centre, in Lisbon, the personalities who turned PoSAT-1 into a reality, celebrating the moment when Portugal joined the countries with space technology, but also the actors of the present and future of the Portuguese space ecosystem. The event starts at 10.30 a.m. and ends at 5.00 p.m.
In the morning, a few memories will be shared with Fernando Carvalho Rodrigues, considered the “father” of the first Portuguese satellite (content in Portuguese). He will be joined by António Seixas (then a member of the Portuguese Air Force), Deodato Cardoso (former OGMA), Fernando Costa (former Portugal Telecom), João Batalha (former Marconi), José Rebordão (former INETI), Miguel Leitmann (former INETI), Óscar Barbosa (former EFACEC) and Mira Amaral (Minister of Industry and Energy in 1993). The panel will also include Conceição Lino, one of the Portuguese journalists who witnessed the launch from the Spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana.
The launch of PoSAT-1 was the beginning of the journey towards Portugal in Space, and the conference will also be the stage for a conversation about the future. The discussion will bring together those responsible for several initiatives in Portugal in satellite constellation development and how the national ecosystem is positioned in the global market.
A second panel will focus on satellite constellation projects currently being developed under the RRP and others being designed under international partnerships. The debate will therefore bring together GEOSAT, Lusospace, the IDD/Tekever, CEiiA/Edisoft and Efacec/Spinworks consortia, and Stratosphere. The discussion will also include the head of the ISTnanosat-1 project, developed by students from Instituto Superior Técnico under the Fly Your Satellite programme of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The event will also be highlighted by the exhibition of some of the pieces that made the history of PoSAT-1, as well as a small display of engineering models of the projects currently being developed in Portugal.
The conference 30 Years of PoSAT-1: The Past and the Future of Portugal in Space is free and open to the public, but registration is mandatory (registration closed at 23:59 on September 17 2023).
