The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a volunteer-run research and outreach organization in the Boston area that works to mitigate existential risks facing humanity, particularly the risks from artificial intelligence (AI).

The institute was founded in March 2014. FLI operates grassroots-style to recruit volunteers and younger scholars from the local community in the Boston area.

The FLI mission is to catalyze and support research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future, including positive ways for humanity to steer its own course considering new technologies and challenges FLI is particularly focused on the potential risks to humanity from the development of human-level artificial intelligence.

It was founded by MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn among others, and includes cosmologist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Elon Musk among others on the board of advisers.

Pocket Spacecraft is a low cost, open source, open access, mass space exploration system that anyone can use.

It is aimed to open space exploration to everyone. Its aim is to send an expedition to the moon and explore the solar system.

Sodern is a French company based in Limeil-Brévannes, near Paris in Ile-de-France, specialized in space instrumentation, optics and neutron analyzers.

Sodern activity started in the neutron area, by designing neutron sources for the French deterrent force.  In the late 1960s, it began to diversify into optical sensors and advanced spacecraft instrumentation.

Nowadays (2015) the company is active in the following fields:

• Spatial Instrumentation: activities cover several ranges of space instruments.
• Stars Trackers
• Optical Instrumentation
• Strip Filters

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a Danish non-profit aerospace organization that has constructed and launched several privately built rockets.

The organization's main goal is to develop relatively inexpensive forms of suborbital manned spaceflight outside government programs and the influence of large, for-profit corporations. Founded in 2008, the project has accomplished a successful sea launch of an experimental hybrid rocket dubbed HEAT-1X carrying a full-scale human model. The test was performed in June 2011 from a seagoing mobile launch platform in the Baltic Sea, but had to be aborted after 21 seconds at an altitude of 2.8 km when the rocket began to veer off course. On June 23, 2013, the team successfully launched the actively guided SAPPHIRE-1 rocket to an altitude of 8.5 kilometers.

In addition to their main stated goal to achieve suborbital manned spaceflight, Copenhagen Suborbitals has also focused on fundraising solely through donations and sponsorships.

Space Angels Network is an angel investing network which connects investors and entrepreneurs to encourage private investment in commercial space, aerospace, and aviation startups.

Its members typically invest in early-stage companies which are not yet ready for venture capital.

By focusing on industry instead of geography, the subject-matter expertise of both the management team and members allows Space Angels Network to evaluate deals that would never have made it past the initial screening of more traditional angel groups. Investments are typically companies with experienced teams pursuing large markets with a unique product, service, or business model in the following fields:

• Satellite (telecom, GPS navigation, geospatial imaging, weather observation)
• Transportation (vehicles, tourism, platforms, components, services, operations infrastructure)
• Biomedical & life sciences
• Microgravity research
• Space habitats
• Space debris removal & satellite refueling
• Manufacturing, mining, and construction
• Space energy
• UAVs and Aircraft

FFD (Final Frontier Design) has been developing space suits since 2006. Our latest, 3rd generation garment features a single pressure layer, combining high-strength materials and low-torque mobility joints in a safe, light-weight, cost-efficient suit designed specifically for the needs of civilian space access.

OPALS (Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science) is an optical communication in outer space experiment developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the International Space Station.

It is testing the potential for using an optical laser to transmit data, at much higher rates than traditional space-based RF communications, to Earth from space. It was launched to the orbital station aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 18 April 2014, as part of the unpressurized payload cargo of the SpaceX CRS-3 Dragon spacecraft.

The mission has been considered a success as of December 2014. There were two major accomplishments:

• A massive speed increase taking 3.5 seconds to download a video that traditionally would have taken 10 minutes.
• Ability to re-acquire tracking after signal was lost due to cloud cover.

Antwerp Space develops systems, which initially accommodated the growing needs of the European space program and have found application in a broad range of commercial space applications worldwide. Antwerp Space provides expertise and system solutions for broadband access systems via satellites, satellite ground control stations for spacecraft control and reception of data from earth observation satellites and test systems used during the integration of spacecraft.

Antwerp Space designs and sells

• High performance demodulators for
• Earth Observation,
• Satellite Telemetry, Command and Ranging
• MF-TDMA DVB-RCS burst
• High performance RF converters

Antwerp Space is a member of the OHB AG Group and belonging to OHB's Space Systems business unit.

Stevenson Astrosat is a British commercial astronautics and technology integration company. It is based in Scotland.

Utilising space based imagery and data for business decision makers is our main focus. We use multiple space based systems and combine the data with our proprietry or licensed technology and scientific models to provide clients with the intelligence they need to make critical choices in real time or when planning into the future.

We also develop technologies to visualise and track assets as they are dipersed throughout the globe. 

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.

The VLT consists of four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 m across, which are generally used separately but can be used together to achieve very high angular resolution. The four separate optical telescopes are known as Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun, which are all words for astronomical objects in the Mapuche language. The telescopes form an array which is complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of 1.8 m aperture.

The VLT operates at visible and infrared wavelengths. Each individual telescope can detect objects roughly four billion times fainter than can be detected with the naked eye, and when all the telescopes are combined, the facility can achieve an angular resolution of about 0.001 arc-second. This is equivalent to roughly 100 metres (330 feet) resolution at the distance of the Moon. Unfortunately this means the VLT cannot be used to directly image the Apollo Moon landing sites as the largest objects left behind during each mission would only have been abou