As the only airborne cloud research platform holder in Eastern Europe, INCAS is in the perfect position to be a well-known R&D organisation that obtain urgently needed data sets, process and interpret them in order to improve future climate projections. However, to date, a lack of presenting these capabilities has left INCAS too little known in the cloud research community and therefore, underutilized research partner with excellent and very useful facilities. Through the BRACE-MY project, INCAS team will obtain the required skills and an additional equipment needed to complement their research capabilities with state-of-the art aerosol sampling techniques. The foreseen research, conducted in conjunction with strong twinning activities will transfer the skills required for INCAS to perform aerosol-cloud interaction research and elevate its reputation to that of a leader in the cloud and aerosol community. This will be achieved by using a “learning by doing” approach to transfer the best practices for conducting research, disseminating results and educating young scientists from the world-class project partners to INCAS. In particular, this will include: the development of an ice nucleating particle counter based on a state-of-the-art aerosol sampling system provided by a project partner, conducting research flights, publishing and presenting research results within internationally recognized platforms, organizing and lecturing at summer schools designed for upcoming researcher in the field and gaining the managerial skills required to become a recognized partner for aerosol and cloud microphysics research. The project partners have been selected to ensure that all of the objectives are guided by leaders in the field of aerosol and cloud research and acting as a research provider. Therefore, BRACE-MY will give INCAS, a research institute in a “widening country”, the opportunity to elevate itself to an internationally recognized cloud and aerosol research institute.

The importance of understanding and monitoring atmospheric physics has increased drastically in recent years due to the anthropogenic impact on climate. One crucial research field is the understanding of wind and temperature distributions in the atmosphere to enhance climate models and improve weather forecasts. There is currently a major data gap for continuous measurements above 5 km, which is the maximum height of commercial compact wind radars and lidars. The goal of EULIAA is the development of a lidar array measuring autonomously the atmospheric wind and temperature from 5 km up to 50 km on a 24/7-basis over a long period of time (> 1 year without maintenance) and covering a large observation area (up to 10’000 km2). EULIAA’s lidar units are low-priced, compact, efficient, easily transportable, and autonomous thanks to low power requirements (by wind turbines or solar panels). EULIAA will yield novel data sets in near real-time for implementation into European databases Copernicus and GEOSS, that will fill current data-gaps and help to monitor the effects of climate change and to evaluate climate protection measures. The baseline technology was demonstrated in the first field campaign with a lidar system that operates in the IR and is currently being transferred to a European industrial partner. Once the enhanced capability developed within EULIAA has been demonstrated and validated in difficult-to-reach regions (polar, equatorial, and mountain), with a high TRL (6–8), a business plan and roadmap for an European array will be produced, involving relevant industrial, standardisation, and end-user actors. The EULIAA project (48 months and 3M€ grant requested) gathers 7 partners from 5 countries with experts in lidar and its subsystems, atmospheric observatories, and atmospheric data provider. It contains all the necessary disciplines to ensure the technological development, data transfer, and sustainable exploitation.

It has been robustly demonstrated that variations in the circulation of the middle atmosphere influence weather and climate throughout the troposphere all the way to the Earth’s surface. A key part of the coupling between the troposphere and stratosphere occurs through the propagation and breaking of planetary-scale Rossby waves and gravity waves. Limited observation of the middle atmosphere and these waves in particular limits the ability to faithfully reproduce the dynamics of the middle atmosphere in numerical weather prediction and climate models. ARISE2 capitalizes upon the work of the EU-funded first ARISE project combining for the first time international networks with complementary technologies such as infrasound, lidar and airglow. This joint network provided advanced data products that started to be used as benchmarks for weather forecast models. The ARISE network also allows enhanced and detailed monitoring of other extreme events in the Earth system such as erupting volcanoes, magnetic storms, tornadoes and tropical thunderstorms. In order to improve the ability of the network to monitor atmospheric dynamics, ARISE2 proposes to extend i) the existing network coverage in Africa and the high latitudes, ii) the altitude range in the stratosphere and mesosphere, iii) the observation duration using routine observation modes, and to use complementary existing infrastructures and innovative instrumentations. Data will be collected over the long term to improve weather forecasting to monthly or seasonal timescales, to monitor atmospheric extreme events and climate change. Compared to the first ARISE project, ARISE2 focuses on the link between models and observations for future assimilation of data by operational weather forecasting models. Among the applications, ARISE2 proposes infrasound remote volcano monitoring to provide notifications to civil aviation. The data portal will provide high-quality data and advanced data products to a wide scientific community.

HEMERA will integrate a large Starting Community in the field of tropospheric and stratospheric balloon-borne research, in order to make existing balloon facilities available to all scientific teams in the EU. The project involves major space agencies dealing with balloon infrastructures, companies operating the balloons, companies providing the necessary technology and scientific experts. Balloon borne instruments are suitable for a wide range of science fields, such as atmospheric measurements, climate and environment related investigations, astronomy and astrophysics, space instruments validation and testing of new technologies. The objectives of HEMERA are to: - Provide better and coordinated balloon access to the troposphere and stratosphere for scientific and technological research - Attract new users to enlarge the community accessing the balloon infrastructure - Enlarge the fields of the science and technology research conducted with balloons - Improve the balloon service offered to scientific and technical users - Favour standardisation, synergy, complementarities and industrialisation through joint The infrastructure deals with a wide range of mission characteristics including altitude, flight duration, instrument mass and volume. Flights can be performed during all seasons at various latitudes, satisfying various scientific needs. Currently, the HEMERA programme will use the Zero Pressure Balloons for stratospheric flights (relevant for measuring Essential Climate Variables and for astrophysics), additional types of balloons can be considered. HEMERA will give access to launch bases and is thus capable of conducting scientific balloon campaigns, in Europe and abroad, necessary in particular for scientific issues in the context of climate change. HEMERA includes 3 major components : - Operational activities to organize and conduct the flights - Development of innovative technologies and infrastructure to optimize the balloon offer - Networking

ENVOL main objective is to provide Europe its prime commercial, competitive and green launch service, utilizing a true New Space approach to offer low-cost, frequent and flexible access to space to small satellites in the range of 100 to 200 kg by 2024. To achieve this goal, the tip of the spear of European innovative space launch companies has joined forces to develop a vertical orbital launch system that will: • Act as an accelerator for the growth of the European New Space economy; • Be competitive and prevail in a contested and global market; • Attract enough investment to reach the tipping point of commercialization; • Target achieving the first European orbital launch from Continental Europe; • Compete for the EC Horizon Prize on European Low-Cost Space Launch; • Be the first orbital launcher worldwide to use green hybrid rocket propulsion. The project will run for 36 months, with 9 industrial companies from 7 European countries. The total EC contribution is 3 987 416 Euro, and the main outputs of ENVOL are: • A detailed definition of an innovative and industrial low-cost European launch system • A total of four ambitious launch vehicle demonstrators on the turbopump, tank and structures, launcher avionics and payload avionics, advancing the maturity of critical launcher technologies to ensure market readiness and competitiveness. • A business plan grounded by industrial expertise, along with a development plan and the identification of the organization capable to attract investments and to ensure that the work performed in this project transforms into a commercial activity servicing the small satellite launch market in Europe and beyond.