Francesco Spina is a space engineer working to enable a more sustainable and affordable exploration and exploitation of space while accelerating useful applications of space technology on Earth. Until 2016 he worked as a Research Engineer at the ESA European Astronaut Centre, performing research on innovative enabling technologies for future exploration of the Moon and Mars. For his work, he received several prizes from NASA, ESA and JAXA. In 2016 he won, among more than 5000 candidates coming from all over the world, a Google scholarship to attend the Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley, USA, where he worked on technological solutions that can have an impact on at least one billion people on Earth within the next decade. In 2017 he joined SES, the world-leading satellite communications operator. The prestigious MIT Technology Review selected him in the list of the top 15 Innovators Under 35 of 2017.