European Space Agency and Merck Expand Cooperation

Mer­ck, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, and the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA) signed a Let­ter of Intent to extend by a fur­ther two years their coop­er­a­tion agree­ment from 2016. The two part­ners will con­tin­ue to coop­er­ate inten­sive­ly in the fields of inno­va­tion, dig­i­tal­iza­tion and mate­ri­als research. With respect to inno­va­tion, the focus will be on the fields of Biosens­ing and Bioin­t­er­faces, Clean Meat and Liq­uid Biop­sy technologies.

“It is our goal to con­tin­ue and inten­si­fy the exchange between ESA and Mer­ck in a tar­get­ed man­ner. Sci­en­tif­ic progress is the key to improv­ing the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple. Part­ner­ships, such as this one with ESA, help to accel­er­ate this progress and thus to achieve objec­tives faster.”

Kai Beck­mann, CEO Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als and mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of Merck

“The pro­file and strate­gic inter­ests of both orga­ni­za­tions com­ple­ment each oth­er superbly,” said Rolf Dens­ing, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions and Head of the Euro­pean Space Oper­a­tions Cen­ter (ESOC) at ESA. “This allows both part­ners to open­ly share and make use of syn­er­gies in terms of com­pe­tences, meth­ods and tools.”

Mer­ck and ESA began coop­er­at­ing in 2011 and had most recent­ly extend­ed their part­ner­ship in 2016. The focus of the agree­ment signed today is on the fol­low­ing topics:

Inno­va­tion: Future projects will be derived from the three strate­gic inno­va­tion fields of the Mer­ck Inno­va­tion Cen­ter (Biosens­ing and Bioin­t­er­faces, Clean Meat and Liq­uid Biop­sy tech­nolo­gies). The aim is to make con­tri­bu­tions that will fur­ther the devel­op­ment of human space exploration.

More­over, both part­ners will fur­ther share their expe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence in the area of inno­va­tion process­es, for instance, in stim­u­lat­ing inno­va­tion in both orga­ni­za­tions in the con­text of the Mer­ck Inno­va­tion Cen­ter or via the new­ly estab­lished man­age­r­i­al posi­tion of Inno­va­tion Offi­cer on the ESA side.

The top­ic of Biosens­ing and Bioin­t­er­faces focus­es main­ly on the inter­face between biol­o­gy and dig­i­tal­iza­tion. By apply­ing data analy­sis tools, faster and more pre­cise (remote) mon­i­tor­ing and treat­ment will be enabled  in numer­ous dis­ease areas. The focus of Clean Meat is on the biotech­nol­o­gy required to pro­duce gen­uine meat grown in vit­ro. The third inno­va­tion field tar­gets tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions to over­come unre­solved chal­lenges in the liq­uid biop­sy work­flow to detect dis­eases soon­er and more readily.

Dig­i­tal­iza­tion: Dig­i­tal­iza­tion offers sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial for ESA and Mer­ck. Both orga­ni­za­tions there­fore aim to con­tin­ue the exchange between their sci­en­tists and engi­neers on new and inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies such as automa­tion and auton­o­my con­cepts, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, cloud com­put­ing, sim­u­la­tion, and Big Data, and vir­tu­al real­i­ty meth­ods for lab­o­ra­to­ry and explo­ration activ­i­ties on both sides.

Mate­ri­als Research: The devel­op­ment of new, high-per­for­mance mate­ri­als is a core activ­i­ty of ESA and Mer­ck. Poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion fields include liq­uid crys­tal tech­nolo­gies, coat­ings, and semiconductors.

Beyond the spe­cif­ic devel­op­ment of inno­va­tions, an inten­sive dia­logue on future top­ics is also part of the col­lab­o­ra­tion. For exam­ple, in recent years, a series of events and activ­i­ties have tak­en place. These include a co-host­ed hackathon as well as a pre­sen­ta­tion by Ger­man ESA astro­naut Thomas Reit­er for select­ed sci­en­tists at Mer­ck in Darm­stadt. At the Inno­va­tion and Lead­er­ship in Aero­space Con­fer­ence in 2018 in Berlin, Kai Beck­mann and Rolf Dens­ing were mem­bers of a pan­el dis­cus­sion enti­tled “Space meets Non-Space”. As the only non-space indus­try part­ner, Mer­ck par­tic­i­pat­ed for the sec­ond time in a cross-indus­try chal­lenge at ESA’s sec­ond Space Explo­ration Mas­ters last year. The top­ic of the win­ning team was use of biore­ac­tors in space to solve the prob­lem of hav­ing an autonomous food and oxy­gen sup­ply at a lunar base.