Ireland's first national Space Strategy for Enterprise by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovationaims aims to set out how Ireland can maximise the benefit of its investment in the European Space Agency (ESA) and in the European Union's (EU) flagship space programmes, Copernicus, Galileo and Horizon 2020.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced the selection of the EIRSAT-1 satellite, led by University College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast, in partnership with five Irish companies to develop, launch and operate a Cubesat to be launched from the International Space Station. This will be Ireland's first ever satellite and is being developed under the ESA Education Office "Fly Your Satellite" ! 2017 Programme.