Professor Marek Banaszkiewicz has been selected to lead the Polish Space Agency.
The Polish Space Agency (POLSA) should begin operating starting from the beginning of 2015. Throughout 2014 numerous legal procedures have been done by the lower and upper chamber of the Parliament. Finally, on the 20th of October the President of Poland, Mr Bronislaw Komorowski, has signed an act establishing POLSA. The agency will be located in the city of Gdansk, northern Poland. The exact place of the agency’s headquarters still remains to be determined in the coming months.
Until the end of November it was also unknown who might be the first director of POLSA. Several surnames of known Polish scientists have been unofficially presented, however they have never been confirmed. Finally, on th 27th of November it became known that Professor Marek Banaszkiewicz will lead the preparations to establish POLSA.
Professor Marek Banaszkiewicz is the current director of the Warsaw based Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Centrum Badan Kosmicznych, CBK PAN), the leading Polish R&D institute in space technologies. Professor Banaszkiewicz is known also for his extensive understanding of commercial aspects of the space project, which is certainly an important topic for this sector.
Certainly, the first few months of POLSA’s activities will focus on administrative matters. This will be also the main goal of Professor Banaszkiewicz’s activities. The initial budget for the agency is estimated to amount between 5 and 10 M PLN (1.25 – 2.5 M EUR).
