Stella Tkatchova is an Advisory Board member and an Innovation Manager in the European Space Industry. She provides strategic, technology, commercialization and market foresight on innovation projects in the domains of in orbit satellite servicing, space debris removal, solar power and cis-lunar exploration. She is a former EIC Space Portfolio Program Manager, she led the R&I activities of the EIC space portfolio and shaped the EIC space vision. With experience of more than 20 years in the space industry. She managed and grew the EIC space portfolio from 2022 until 2026 and supported the space SMEs and start-ups to achieve breakthrough innovation.
Previously she worked as a project manager and commercialization manager in the European space industry, managing a number of projects in the telecommunications (e.g. ESA ARTES INDIGO public private partnership, GOVSATCOM, O3B) and Earth observation (e.g. Copernicus Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 3) domains. She co-founded a company in the domain of active debris removal and helped several SMEs and start-ups grow in the Newspace industry. Earlier in her career, she worked at ESA’s European Space and Technology Centre (ESTEC) on the EU Galileo and the International Space Station (ISS) programmes. She holds a PhD by the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of TUDelft, The Netherlands.
She has written numerous articles, books, produced webinars and podcasts on problems related to the commercialization of space technology, space debris mitigation, remediation, in-orbit servicing, active debris removal, in-space logistics and cis-lunar exploration. Tkatchova is the founder and former editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Space Technology Management & Innovation (IJSTMI).