NASA looks to Northern Sweden for inspiration

Norrbotten is home to Esrange, one of the world’s largest space centres with satellite ground stations and facilities for rocket launching and testing across a vast, unpopulated impact and recovery area that covers more than 5,000 square kilometres.

These unique facilities have been utilized by the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for many years, and their work is increasingly important in light of the challenges we face today.

– Studying Earth from space gives valuable insights into climate change and shortens the response time for natural disasters, said Denise Thaller, Director of NASA’s Environmental Management Division.

One of NASA’s biggest challenges in the era of climate change is that they use a lot of energy as well as water to cool their data centres.

– This made it very interesting to visit Demo North. Learning about what is happening here in the north of Sweden and the advances in data centre technology with Facebook being here in Luleå makes Demo North very important to me, Denise Thaller said.

–  Norrbotten is at the forefront of minimizing emissions for industries, said Jörgen Eriksson, CEO of Invest in Norrbotten.

– We are one of the few parts of the world with 100% green energy, and through investments and innovations in bio fuels and “green rail”, we are building a green logistics chain too.  Companies have always been interested in reducing costs but today, they are looking to lower emissions too and here in Norrbotten, we are helping companies to do both, Jörgen Eriksson said.

–  I came here to inspire you, but actually it ended up with Northern Sweden inspiring me, said Denise Thaller.

Nasa was one of the keynote speakers at Demo North Summit, 26-28/2 2020. The event was an activity within the project “Demo North”, owned by Invest in Norrbotten and financed by the European Regional Development Fund, the County Council of Norrbotten and Sparbanken Nord.