Portuguese Space Agency awards U.Porto research

The Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), which has teams at the Astrophysics Centre of the University of Porto (CAUP), the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP), and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, was awarded with the only honourable mention in the Innovation in Space Sciences and Technologies Award 2025, promoted by the Portuguese Space Agency.

This award recognises the involvement of IA teams - and IA/.Porto in particular - in the ESPRESSO project (Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations), a high-resolution spectrograph installed at the Paranal Observatory of the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

This state-of-the-art instrument is powered by the four 8.2 metre telescopes that compose the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and Portugal contributed to the construction of the Coudé Train, the infrastructure that connects the telescopes to the spectrograph.

 

The 2025 Space Science and Technology Innovation Prize was attributed to the GAMA LINK project, led by Tekever, a company based at UPTEC and the most recent Portuguese unicorn.

The company's systems are used in missions by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and various European navies and armed forces, in addition to the direct operational support provided to Ukraine.

The award for Innovation in Space Science and Technology 2025 took place during the 8th edition of the New Space Atlantic Summit. The ceremony was attended by the Secretary of State for Science, Ana Paiva, the chairman of PT Space, Ricardo Conde, the chairman of the award jury, José Manuel Mendonça (INESC TEC), and the IA coordinator, Manuel Abreu.