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New Agreement Makes Israel Major Partner in European Space Program

by TheTower.org Staff |

Announcements of multi-million and even billion-dollar acquisitions of Israeli startups are becoming something of a routine, with Israel’s tech sector being driven in part by a unique environment conducive to civilian-military innovation in general by an internationally recognized environment that nurtures the development of human capital.

The Israeli military’s official blog recently highlighted a 24-hour brainstorming and implementation session – modeled on Facebook’s famed hackathons – which saw soldiers spend a single day pitching software solutions to top IAF figures. The soldiers had just wrapped up a 10-week course. The post quoted a course commander emphasizing that “entrepreneurship and innovation are the key values of” the elite Ofek unit that participated.

Observers have made much of how the skills developed in the IDF eventually become key drivers of Israeli private sector innovation. That private sector innovation, in turn, has become critical not just to Israel’s export sector but even in forging government-to-government cooperation. The European Union has just signed an agreement with Jerusalem that makes Israel a major partner in the bloc’s space program:

At a gala event Monday evening in Jerusalem, Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri and the head of the Israel Space Agency, Menachem Kidron, signed an agreement with European Union officials to give Israeli researchers and companies access to projects associated with the EU’s Galileo satellite program… As an official EU program that is not military in nature, the Galileo project will be open to absorbing technology from a wide variety of sources. As a result of the new agreement, Israel will be one of those sources, Israeli space officials said. Israeli companies will now be able to participate in tenders to supply software and hardware to companies involved in the project, and Israeli scientists and academics will be able to initiate and participate in studies and experiments that will be part of the Galileo program.

[Photo: Avishai Teicher / Wiki Commons]

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