The SIRIUS Chair

SIRIUS is a business chair, founded on an original public-private partnership between three major operators in the global space sector (CNES, Airbus Defense and Space and Thales Alenia Space) and two renowned higher education institutions: Toulouse University 1 Capitole and Toulouse Business School.

The SIRIUS Chair's science managers bring together and direct researchers (PhD and post-doctoral students) or well-known international experts. It is also prepared to work with any the other French or European research teams.

It produces reference studies that are eligible for publication in the best (peer-reviewed) international scientific journals. It carries out studies on behalf of the French space industry and helps train and inform the personnel concerned, through seminars or specialized workshops.
The team focuses particularly on the legal, social, economic and managerial issues confronting space activities and, especially, those raised by the generalization of the use of satellites and the multiplication of space applications.

These challenges are occurring in a context that is rapidly being transformed, especially by the opening of the space sector to competition, the privatization and internationalization of the space industry, the progress accomplished in transmission and reception techniques, the introduction of new digital platforms using hybrid networks, and the proliferation of services and applications related to the increasingly generalized use of satellites.

SIRIUS serves the interests of the industries in the European space sector, as well as European space policy-makers and Europe’s space powers.

research topics

Current Research Topics

The SIRIUS Chair favors a "micro" approach as opposed to a "macro" approach. Its work focuses on space companies and the space industrial ecosystem, which is not incompatible with a reflection on the international governance of space activities and its current shortcomings. We use to call on the complementary skills, particularly technical, that we need from the laboratories of the Toulouse university site, as needed.

Deep tech and disruptive space technologies
Space activities market
Strategies of companies in the space sector
Corporate financing and space project financing
International Governance of Space and Space Activities
Space laws and regulations
Space policies and international cooperation
Economic impact of the space industry
Space, Debris and Climate
Resources and commercial exploitation of space
Space insurance
Space exploration and expeditions
Space contracts
International Space Treaties, Multilateralism and the Principle of Reciprocity
Sector and space industries

The team

Directeur scientifique

Professeur Lucien Rapp

Lucien Rapp est agrégé des Facultés de droit, professeur à l’Université Toulouse 1 Capitole Expert des secteurs de l’aéronautique et du spatial depuis de nombreuses années, il est régulièrement classé parmi les meilleurs spécialistes mondiaux du droit de l’espace et des communications (Band 1).