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Episode 128: George Danos: Cyprus in Space

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George Danos. President of CSEO

Cyprus is a small country with a small economy with big ambitions in space. George Danos is the president of the Cyprus Space Exploration  Organisation and is considered by some as Cyprus’s Carl Sagan. He has been championing the case for space in Cyprus for years.

In this episode, recorded during Cospar 2025 in Nicosia, he describes the rise of Cyprus’s space activities in communication services, small satellites, collaboration with ESA and more.

  • As President of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSO), George Danos has been pivotal in advancing Cyprus’s space programme, particularly regarding international partnerships, infrastructure development, and commercialisation.
  • CSO created spin-off companies, such as Space System Solutions, to promote technology transfer.
  • Cyprus recently achieved Associate Membership status within the European Space Agency (ESA).
  • George Danos spearheaded CSO’s major role in achieving the ESA PECs (Plan for European Cooperating States since around 2016.
  • Establishing the International Space Innovation Centre (CSpark) in Cyprus
  • The first fully integrated Cypriot CubeSat is targeted for readiness by 2026.
  • CSO signed an MOU with Japan’s IHI for new-generation secure maritime communication and India’s Pixxel space, focusing on hyperspectral Earth observation sensors.

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Episode 106 – ESA’s new science missions

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Pau McNamara

European Space Agency’s Dr Paul McNamara was studying low-frequency gravitational waves just before they were discovered in 2015. Now he is the astronomy and astrophysics coordinator for the European Space Agency. In this interview, recorded in Athens during Cospar2022, he speaks about some of the exciting science missions that ESA will be launching later this decade.

These missions include

  • Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer
  • Euclid – To explore dark matter and dark energy
  • Plato – The next-generation planet-hunting mission
  • Ariel – A UK-led mission to explore the atmospheres of exoplanets

He also talks about ESA’s publicly available resources especially useful to science educators. Planetary Science Archive and ESA Sky. They are available to anyone, in or outside Europe and without charge. Links are available on this episode’s web page.

Dr Paul McNamara

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Episode 105 – Return to Titan – Dragonfly

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NASA’s Cassini-Huygens lander arrived at Titan on 14th January 2005. The first instrument to make contact with the surface of Titan was a penetrometer made by Ralph Lorenz. Since then he has gone on to write many books and work on several other projects.

Dr Ralph Lorenz

In this episode, he speaks about some of those projects, especially Dragonfly, a return mission to land on Titan. This mission, for which he is the mission architect, is like no other. It is not really a lander or rover but a quadcopter that will sample different regions near the landing site during its 3.3-year lifetime. Ralph talks about what we can expect from Dragonfly which launches in 2027 and arrives at Titan in 1934.

The documentary Destination Titan we refer to in this discussion is available here is available on Youtube here.

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Episode 101 UNOOSA – Peaceful Uses of Outer Space

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Niklas Hedman
Acting Director UNOOSA

Niklas Hedman, the Acting Director of the United Nations Office for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNOOSA) talks about UNOOSA’s ongoing role in facilitating and promoting the peaceful uses of space in Low Earth orbit and beyond.

In this interview recorded in July during COSPAR2022 in Athens, he speaks about the challenges and opportunities of space in the context of

  • Increasing commercial activities
  • Mega satellite constellations
  • Small Satellites
  • Legally and non-legally binding instruments Planetary Protection

He highlights a few of the many resources available online from UNOOSA’s website including the Space Objects Register, Online Index and Sustainable Development Goals. Video and audio links below

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