On Space Research and Regional Development.

While opening unprecedented opportunities of economic growth and wellbeing, the so called “New Economy” also poses additional societal challenges of social and environmental nature. This study illustrates, within the general framework of the New Economy, the state-of-art of the space economy and, within it, of space-borne Earth Observations (EO). Specifically, the research illustrates how the EO can play a key role in collecting (not only) environmental data at the global scale, providing a crucial contribution in achieving most of the Sustainable Development Goals, as widely documented by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO, 2017). Furthermore, the EO value chain requires the activation of numerous other sectors, within the space economy and more in general pertaining to the scientific domain, and each of them is able to generating technological spillovers in many other economic sectors of activity, as already happened during Nineties with the pervasive diffusion of the ICTs. Finally, the research provides support to the thesis fostered in the New Industrial Strategy (Vv. Aa., 2019), that “the new European economic policy will bring European institutions closer to European citizens if it will be able to meet their needs for a better quality of life in cities, the need to preserve the natural environment and the urgent need to reduce social inequalities and to a greater fiscal pressure on higher incomes” (p.1). In the first paragraph, the most relevant traits of the ongoing globalization process are briefly summarized, then in the second paragraph the focus shifts on the analysis of the space economy, and, within it, of the EO value chain. Finally, in the third paragraph, the most pressing societal and territorial implications collected are briefly summarized and converted into a set of policy recommendations.