Copernical is an independent not-for-profit project to curate and showcase global space assets.  The objective is to survey the capabilities and equipment available in the space industry across the world.  The project seeks to foster, stimulate innovation and development of space programmes and initiatives across borders.

COPERNICAL connects people, companies, missions, and projects in the space industry.

This site is the space professionals networking portal and is aimed at facilitating communication and information exchange amongst professionals involved in the space industry and space science fields. It provides a site for all participants in these fields including students, engineers, scientist, managers, and decision makers to present their activities and discuss issues in an open forum across the world. It also provides free and open data resources for space companies and space missions and space related science and technology. If you are looking for information, wishing to build teams, or just want to share your experiences or projects, then this is the place for you!

• Inform the space community of your skills and current activities.
• Explore similar projects and missions.
• Showcase your company, projects, and products.
• Share knowledge and information on developments in the space industry.
• Build virtual teams.
• Stimulate collaboration between Research and Industry.

You are invited to participate in our effort to provide the most complete and relevant data for space science, space technology, space missions ...

The Copernical Team

In this website, an organisation is a general term that covers public entity, private entity (i.e. a company), government institution, association, society, etc.

Copernical provides three different sets of company or organisation details that can be managed by a registered User separately and independently of each entry:

• User profile details.

A User can state the company or organisation name that he is employed by in his profile.

• Organisation details in the Copernical Space Asset database.

A member can add an organisation to the space asset register and maintain the description of the organisation, logos, image contact details and literature attachments.  The organisation entry is intended to describe the organisation and its scope and capability within the space industry. A member that creates an organisation article becomes the author and can edit or delete the item at any time from the article menu on their profile page. 

• Companies Recruiting.

A member that registers as a recruiter in the jobs board can define and describe a separate company entity.  The company entity is intended to describe the company and its employment conditions, work culture and general career opportunities.  Job advertisements are linked to this company entity

Within Copernical a project is defined as a scientific or technological program, identified and documented, like: "the Space Shuttle", "Ariane rocket", "CubeSat satellite", etc.

A project must have at least one internet reference (i.e. one internet page up and running so that the Copernical team can check it for compliance against the Copernical policy). This internet reference shall be either an official page or a Wikipedia page.

When a user creates a new project record in Copernical (either in the user profile or directly with the "add project" top menu function), this project is immediately added in the list of Copernical projects. This new project is listed and visible from the Copernical top menu.

For the consistency of the website the Copernical team is monitoring each new project. When a project is identified as not compliant with the above definition, it may be immediately unpublished and deleted. 

Within Copernical a product is defined as a software, hardware or specialist service with a clear space application and identified and documented, like: "Onboard computer", "solar panel cells", "Satellite Orbit Analysis Program (SOAP)", etc.

A project must have at least one internet reference (i.e. one internet page up and running so that the Copernical team can check it for compliancy against the Copernical policy). This internet reference shall be either an official page or a Wikipedia page.

When a user creates a new product record in Copernical (either in the user profile or directly with the "add product" top menu function), this product is immediately added in the list of Copernical projects. This new product is listed and visible from the Copernical top menu.

For the consistency of the website the Copernical team is monitoring each new product. When a product is identified as not compliant with the above definition, it may be immediately unpublished and deleted. 

To advertise a job, the procedure is the following:

• Register as a user;
• Fill your user profile with at least one current position indicating your current organisation - this is mandatory to be able to register later as an employer;
• Go to the jobs sections and register as an employer;
• Once in the jobs section as an employer, a dedicated dashboard is displayed to define and manage your job vacancies.

If you wish to place advertisements on this website, please send a request at

Members can create and manage member empowered common interest groups centred around space subjects, organisations, projects or products.

A Group is a gathering of Copernical members that wish to share content and engage in specific discussions with other members. Each Group has an owner, moderators and user group members. Groups are also characterized by the method used to attract group members.

Groups can be assigned to a group category that has its own landing page and canvas/logo layout.

There are three types of groups "Open", "Apporval" or "Invite".

Groups:

• Allows Members to create groups
• Members can join by request or invitation.
• Group wall posting
• Share documents and images and organise in folders
• Schedule events and google maps
• Group activity notification
• Group messaging
• Dedicated group forum with privacy control.

Yes.  Only members that have been invited and approved by the group owner can view and access these groups.

Agora (in ancient Greece meaning a public open space used for assemblies and markets).  The Copernical Agora is a place for space professionals to meet and exchange information.

There are a number of subject categories in which members can discuss and exchange information amongst themselves.

Articles are documents describing products, projects or organisations.  These are written and owned by the original author and can be searched and viewed by other members.  Only the author and site admin can edit or delete the article. Other members may add comment on the articles or reference them in the forum.  The author can control whether the article is published or unpublished on the site.

Blogs are items of text and images that are written by members on subjects relating to space.  These can be published technical papers, comment, opinion, announcements or even a technical diary.  A non exhaustive example of subjects that could be added as a blog are; a technical analysis of an onboard antenna design, an opinion of a mission specification, an announcement of a new concept/project/product etc or a diary of a lunch campaign or mission event.

Any member can add an “article” on the site to describe a product, project or organisation.  A member that creates an article becomes the author and can edit or delete the item at any time from the article menu on their profile page.  The author should include as much detail as possible and link to any external website, wiki and contact references.  Images and attachments can be included. A sophisticated tag/keyword system is used to link related articles, so the author should include as many relevant tags/keywords as possible.

We only use personal data for the operation of the site and do not sell or pass on any data to third parties.  The member has control over what data is visible to the public or other members.

Members have complete privacy control of any resume they create on the site.  Resumes can be kept private, used to apply for specific jobs on the site or made available to registered recruiters’ searches.

Content data such as articles and blogs that members upload is openly shared with registered members. 

You can search the existing member list to find the member you wish to connect with and request a connection by clicking the connect button and optionally adding a message.  The member can accept or reject your request.

You can send an automatic invitation to any colleague to join Copernical and connect with you by clicking the “invite colleagues” menu item on your profile page.

You can add documents and images to your profile page.  Documents can be organised into folders/albums.  You can set access view restrictions to private, registered members, connections, connections of connections.  This can be further restricted to connection type; contact, collaborator or colleague.

You can communicate with other members by private messaging from your profile page, within specialist groups that you are both joined to or on the forum.  Private messaging is private between the parties and there are various access settings for the specialist groups.  Exchanges on the forums are public, except for group level forum which have the same restrictions as the group.