TechTheMoon is the world’s first lunar incubator. It offers entrepreneurs the chance to create and develop innovative solutions, technologies, products and services to address the challenges associated with long-term, sustainable human settlement on the Moon.
As pioneers of the lunar economy, they are therefore paving the way for a new Earth-Moon commercial ecosystem with high added value.
Supported by CNES and partner incubators, the selected startups will be able to grow in an environment conducive to collective innovation and cross-fertilization. All the elements are already in place to facilitate their interactions with the world of research and industry.
NewSpace & Connect by CNES Strategy Director
After working at the CEA and then over ten years in the United States as an entrepreneur and investor “angel” in biotech, deeptech and digital fields, Thomas joined CNES in 2017 as Business Development Deputy to the Director of Innovation with the mission of driving an agile and collaborative innovation dynamic to facilitate interaction with France’s NewSpace startup ecosystem. Since January 2022, he has been head of strategy for the Connect by CNES program, supporting any entity in integrating Space to meet terrestrial, orbital and lunar challenges. Specifically, he is in charge of the “Moonshot Institute”, an institute dedicated to the Moon with a focus on “innovation for space exploration”, which “TechTheMoon” is integrated into.
NewSpace & Connect by CNES Director of Operations
Philippe BILLAST joined CNES in 2022, after work experiences in a joint Paul Sabatier University – ALCATEL laboratory, as an entrepreneur and as an EMEA IT infrastructure manager for an American company. After working in the IT department and in downstream applications, he is now Director of Connect by CNES operations, an initiave designed to support application development, the space downstream ecosystem, and also the widest range of the ecosystem new entrants, notably those offering (upstream) space technologies and infrastructures.
Spaceship FR project manager
Alexis PAILLET is Spaceship FR project manager and head of exploration technologies at the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in Toulouse. He is an aeronautical and space engineer from Supaero in Toulouse, and holds a planetary studies PhD .
Alexis joined the French space agency in 2005 to work on the development, assembly and testing of space instruments for robotic Mars exploration (ChemCam on board the Curiosity rover and the main seismometer on the Insight Mars lander).
Since 2019, Alexis has been head of the Spaceship FR project, which is designed to prepare manned spaceflight and robotic space exploration, by validating and promoting French technologies on Earth, deploying them on test bases in order to begin Moon exploration and export this model to Mars. This project is a laboratory for ideas and technology demonstration in support of a future lunar base, which is being prepared under the impulse of the Artemis American program.
CNES expertise for space startups, throughout the R&D pipeline.From creative thinking through to promotion, and including technical expertise, access to patents, software and space data, Connect by CNES makes CNES’s know-how and technical resources available to startups, and helps them identify their needs.
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SpaceShip France is gathering all the necessary skills to prepare for long-term habitation, first on the Moon and then on Mars, by bringing together professionals from a wide range of economic sectors, companies, schools, universities and the general public around the human exploration of the solar system. Dedicated premises will be set up on CNES’s Toulouse SpaceCentre site.
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