SPACE OSCARS 2019

For the ninth time, the Awards Ceremony of the Copernicus Masters honoured brilliant innovations in Earth observation. A total of eight trophies were handed out to the best submissions in seven partner challenges as well as the overall winner.

On 4 December 2019, the Earth observation community gathered at the historic Paasitorni Congress in Helsinki, Finland. Space business experts and enthusiasts, investors, visionaries and up-and-coming entrepreneurs all enjoyed the highlight of the EU Space Week: The Space Oscars 2019.

Organised by AZO, the Awards Ceremony creates a festive ambiance for the Copernicus Masters winners to enjoy their glorious moment of being awarded live on stage by the speakers from the competition’s challenge partners.  

EU Space Week 2019
The annual Space Week is Europe’s number one space event and aims to bring together entrepreneurs, experts and policy-makers from Earth observation and satellite navigation in the home country of the EU Council Presidency. In 2019, the space community was invited to Helsinki, Finland. Inside the historic Paasitorni Congress, a variety of plenary sessions, workshops, information sessions and networking opportunities were held from 1 to 5 December 2019. By integrating accelerator bootcamps, a hackathon event, a startup fair and the Awards Ceremony of the Copernicus Masters and Galileo Masters, the next generation of promising space entrepreneurs was introduced to important members of the Earth observation and satellite navigation community. This get-together of visionaries and innovative solutions with experienced and renowned space experts and stakeholders benefits all of the participants and creates the perfect framework for new opportunities in the space business.

Speakers & Winners
The festive highlight of the European Space Week, the “Space Oscars” Awards Ceremony, was hosted by Claus Kruesken and started with welcome words from Thorsten Rudolph, CEO of AZO. Throughout the whole evening, the stage was open for live pitches by winners and introduction videos presenting their innovative business cases as well as high-ranking speakers from the Copernicus Masters partners.

The first trophy was handed over by Dr Thomas Beer, Copernicus Policy Officer at ESA, who emphasised the importance of Earth observation and invited the winning team led by Max Gulde on stage for the ESA Copernicus 4.0 Challenge award. Following this, the team behind ajuma presented their innovation with a short video and was handed over the award for the DLR Environment, Energy & Health Challenge by Gunter Schreier, Deputy Director of the German Remote Sensing Data Center at DLR. The trophy from the BayWa Smart Farming challenge was presented by Jörg Migende, Head of Digital Farming at BayWa, to the proud team behind audili. Nicolas Huguet, Head of Digital Services at Airbus Defence and Space, awarded another Space Oscar to remotIO-X for winning the Airbus sobloo Multi-Data Challenge and – last but not least – Dr Rainer Hollmann from the BMVI congratulated the team from ERMES on winning the BMVI Digital Transport Challenge.

One of the special moments of this night was the awarding of the new Social Entrepreneurship Challenge. Steve Lee, CEO at Astrosat, awarded the socially benefiting startup Zuri.

Agnieszka Lukaszczyk, Senior Director of European Affairs at Planet, presented the prize for the Planet “See Change, Change the World” challenge to the team behind Green City Watch. The winners enjoyed their moment live on stage and even got to stand there for a second time as they were also named the Copernicus Masters Overall Winner later that night by Jan Wörner, Director General of ESA.

The awarding of these seven Copernicus Masters winner teams marked the ceremonial conclusion to the 2019 competition. The young entrepreneurs also demonstrated promising new solutions using Earth observation technology in a variety of application fields that hold the potential to become future success stories.