Inspiring men and women and sharing our passion for space 10-14-2022 |  3 minutes

In order to stimulate education and research around space, we are working with a large number of partners. Bridges have thus been built with schools, universities, research centers and networks of SMEs (small and medium enterprises). These collaborations enable us to carry out a hundred or so research and development (R&D) projects at the same time and to support about 80 scientific PhD theses permanently.

We have developed a network of partner teaching establishments in Europe and are working in collaboration with about twenty of them. In France, these are for example the Polytechnique, ISAE-SUPAERO, and ESTACA schools, and in Germany, the universities of Munich, Aachen (RWTH), Giessen, Stuttgart (the IRS space systems institute) and Bremen (the ZARM space and microgravity technology center).

ArianeGroup has also jointly created the “ESA-Lab@HEC” space economy chair with the European Space Agency (ESA), and a defense and aerospace chair with the Sciences Po school in Bordeaux.

We have also developed the Launchers Academy to leverage ArianeGroup expertise within schools and universities in order to develop the talents of tomorrow, but also with our industrial partners and customers to build the Europe of space.

In addition to these partnerships, ArianeGroup places great importance on ensuring that students are made aware of the space and engineering professions.

Our commitment to sharing knowledge and enhancing the education of future generations is reflected by our policy of internships and apprenticeships for the young. In 2020, despite the difficult context, we welcomed about 750 students from more than 100 schools, colleges and universities to our sites in Germany and France. Every year, we continue to maintain this large number of internships and apprenticeships that we extensively promote at the many forums in which we take part.

The employees of ArianeGroup are also the leading promoters of space. From 4 to 10 October last, for World Space Week (WSW), no fewer than 190 of them went to more than 300 classes in France and Germany, to talk about space to over 9,500 pupils – from primary school to high school – presenting its day-to-day benefits and also the story of the conquest of space and of the Ariane launcher.

Finally, to share this knowledge even more extensively with the citizens, we propose educational content about space on our website, our social networks or at conferences. Our in-house instructors also teach in schools and universities.