President Petr Pavel opened the seventh annual festival of space activities Czech Space Week and the conference Czech User Forum Copernicus and Remote Sensing. He said the Czech Republic should pay close attention to space activities. There is potential for international cooperation, he said today at the opening ceremony of the festival.
Speech by the President of the Republic at the opening of the Czech Space Week Forum
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
I am truly delighted to be here today, together with the ministers, representatives of business, academia, institutions and other organisations, to launch this year's Czech Space Week, because space exploration, the space industry, the space industry are precisely the sectors that I am convinced the Czech Republic should pay great attention to.
It is a sector with very high quality technologies, it is a sector with high added value and with huge potential not only for the Czech Republic but also for international cooperation. And although space research, space technologies and space exploration may seem to some to be too distant and a little abstract for our everyday lives, we cannot imagine our lives today without space research and space technologies. For example, just the floods that we faced a few months ago, and now we are seeing the effects again in Spain. If we did not have such accurate data from satellite reconnaissance - the Copernicus programme has been mentioned here - and probably the predictions of our Hydrometeorological Institute, the estimates of how far the floods would go would be much less accurate and the damage would be much greater, including to lives. We see that there is a great deal of criticism in Spain right now about the accuracy of the forecasts and warnings. Here again, I would like to pay tribute to our Hydrometeorological Institute for the way in which they have helped to reduce the damage, even though it is not very small.
But space technology, space research is also important in many other sectors. And it is hard to imagine our life today without the Internet provided by satellites, without the wealth of data that is being obtained from space, but equally without the research that is being carried out in space for the benefit of the Earth, whether it concerns new materials, whether it concerns the discovery of raw materials, whether it concerns all modes of transport around the globe. In fact, space exploration extends to almost every part of our lives. That is why I am glad that you are here in such large numbers, because I see great promise not only in the sharing between you, but especially in the international cooperation. Whether I travel to countries like Luxembourg or Rwanda, there are great opportunities for cooperation in both of these countries, even though they represent different parts of the spectrum. In Luxembourg, our companies, our institutions have a very high profile, and in Rwanda, for example, there is a great deal of interest in cooperation with our companies and scientific institutions. So I would like to wish you a successful meeting, many inspiring suggestions and a lot of determination in your future work, because that is exactly what we should be doing. Thank you.
Petr Pavel, President of the Republic, Fanta Hall, Main Railway Station Prague, 4 November 2024
castle.cz/ gnews - RoZ
PHOTO - Zuzana Bönisch
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