European Space Agency And FIS Join Forces To Support Sustainability In Snow Sports

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) announced today a collaboration under ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions program (BASS) that aims to put the technology of space applications at the service of sustainability in snow sports.

• Organizations sign a Memorandum of Intent with the idea of developing and implementing space applications to support fight against climate change, protection of biodiversity, and growth of the circular economy.
• Agreement includes the possibility of working on future common topics of interest such as athlete performance, safety and security around events, and recreational snow sports experiences.

The announcement was made during the ESA BASS conference, ‘Towards a space-powered economy’, which took place between 25 and 26 November at ESA ECSAT in Harwell, United Kingdom.

The two organizations signed a Memorandum of Intent focused on the development and implementation of space applications to enable innovation towards preventing deforestation, fighting climate change, protecting biodiversity, reducing pollution and carbon emissions, and growing the circular economy.

"The connection between sports events and sustainability is becoming increasingly important, as the industry plays a key role in advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. This collaboration not only fosters innovation, but also has the potential to make a substantial impact on the broader events industry, supporting its efforts to achieve essential sustainability targets in a large scale."" said Davide Coppola, Head of ESA’s Space Applications Initiatives Section.

“Issues like the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity do not pertain to any specific area of society: they are the fundamental challenge of our lifetime, for all of us, and can only be addressed through collective effort. This is our reasoning when entering a partnership like this with ESA, which brings the highest level of human knowledge and technology to our common mission of making the world – and snow sports, for that matter – much more sustainable,” says FIS Sustainability Director Susanna Sieff.

The collaboration announcement comes ahead of ESA’s ‘Space for Sustainability in Sports and Mass Events’ funding opportunity that opens on 31 January 2025.

Over the course of the coming weeks, ESA and FIS will work to outline the first joint activities under the collaboration agreement.

Additionally, the Memorandum of Intent anticipates the potential implementation of space applications to address other future common topics of interest such as athlete performance, safety and security around events, and recreational snow sports experiences.