IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021 - 55

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2020.3045156

Interview

A Perspective of European Space Activities-A Conversation With Elena
Grifoni-Winters
Interviewer: Alfonso Farina, Selex ES, Roma 00195, Italy

INTRODUCTION TO THE CONVERSATION
Professor Fulvio Gini, General Chair of the conference, had
initially invited Elena Grifoni-Winters to deliver a speech at
the gala dinner of the IEEE Radar Conference, Florence,
Italy, September 21-25, 2020. The recent and wise decision
of the organizing committee to run the conference in virtual
format triggered the idea of an interview that was successfully recorded on September 11 and has been transmitted on
September 21 following the official online program. Alfonso
Farina (thanks to Fulvio) had the honor to be the interviewer
of Elena Grifoni-Winters (see Figure 1). The interview
lasted 40 min and was very rich in information; thus, the
idea is to transform the interview into a paper for the IEEE
Systems Magazine of AES, so that the interview contents
will be available to a wider community.
The colloquy addressed " When STEM and management mingle harmoniously, " which we truly hope will be
of interest to all.
Therefore, STEM stands for: Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics. Yet, among the several
definitions, the one that we like the most is:
" An assemblage of practices and processes that
transcend disciplinary lines and from which
knowledge and learning of a particular kind
emerges " [Jean Moon and Susan Rundell Singer,
" Bringing STEM into focus, " Education Week,
vol. 31, no. 19, pp. 32, 24, Feb. 1, 2012].
During her professional career, Elena Grifoni-Winters
has developed a variety of skills, experiences, and competence within top-level prestigious contexts (ESA and NASA
just to mention two). Namely, she has explored research,
technology, education, management, and leadership.
She is also a capable negotiator and very keen on general management issues on space and security.
She received the master's degree in computer sciences
(informatics) from the Faculty of Mathematics, University

of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. She was a Visiting Student with the
University of Southampton as well as with the Harvard
School of Government, Cambridge, MA, USA. She joined
ESA in 1987, first as a Software Engineer and subsequently as a System Engineer with ESTEC. In addition,
she is also a Liaison System Engineer with NASA, Washington, DC, USA, and with the Johnson Space Centre,
Houston, TX, USA.
A few of her first-class accomplishments through the
years are as follows.
1) She was instrumental in the conclusion of several barter
agreements, including with Russia: European software
in exchange of Russian space station docking ports.
2) She launched the Education/Outreach program at ESA.
3) She led the first comprehensive review of ESAs
infrastructure policy and assets to define ESAs real
estate development strategy.
4) She worked on the first collaboration with China in
the area of human spaceflight and operation.

INTERVIEW
Alfonso to Elena: Space borne radars (SBR) are paramount remote sensing assets for Earth observation and
planetary exploration. As an ESA top manager, would
you provide us with some comments on the status of
the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program as
well as possible interest for novel SBRs for debris
detection and tracking?
Elena: In 2008, the European Space Agency put for
the first time on the table of our Ministers1 a proposal for
a program called Space Situational Awareness, or SSA,
that was kicked off with interest, but the relatively small
budget of €50m over three years.
1

Manuscript received September 24, 2020, revised
November 5, 2020; accepted November 13, 2020.
0885-8985/21/$26.00 ß 2021 IEEE
MARCH 2021

The Council of the European Space Agency is composed of representatives of its Member States, which are-typically, the heads of
the national space agencies. When the ESA Council meets at ministerial level, its representatives are the ministers who, in each Member State, are responsible for space activities.

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IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2021

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