RAISEARTH Kick-off Meeting

The RAISEARTH Kick-off Meeting took place on 6-7 October 2026 at Arenberg Castle in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by KU Leuven. Representatives of all 21 partners from 14 European countries met to turn the project’s four-year vision into a concrete plan for the first year.

The first day focused on what we are building and how we will work together. The Coordinator, Anna Belehaki (NOA), presented the project’s ambition: to integrate Europe’s distributed Sun-Earth observing facilities, databases, models and AI/ML capabilities into a single, service-ready research ecosystem. The six work package leaders then presented their plans.

We were also pleased to welcome our EC Project Officer, who presented the Commission’s expectations and guidance for the project.

On the second day, the RAISEARTH nodes introduced their facilities, data and services, from radars, radio telescopes and ionosondes to GNSS networks, models and digital infrastructures. The meeting closed with a discussion on where RAISEARTH can do more together than separately, and with a common Year-1 action plan.

As the Coordinator put it: “We are not starting from zero. RAISEARTH starts from proven facilities, datasets, models and platforms, and makes them work together.”.