Slovak Space Policy Association (SSPA) is a non-governmental organization dealing prevalently with policy, governance, law and European space integration on an expert level. Our organization is the only fully professional think-tank in the area of space policy and law in Slovakia. The main role of SSPA is to increase the quality and expertise of information and the boost of public discussion about issues concerning the use of outer space and its crucial impact on societal, economic, scientific, research and external relations of the Slovak Republic and its international partners.
Our team encompasses experts in policy, security and legal aspects of the use of outer space with ample experience in publication activities in professional and scientific journals, as well as in lecturing at international conferences and congresses. SSPA members have conducted several work-related stays and internships in distinguished institutions, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Centre for Space Law (ECSL), European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), European Commission and United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UN OOSA). Moreover, SSPA is (through its members) a national point of contact for the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) and a member of regional think-tank network in the framework of IRSEC Hub project.
Our team
Chairman – Matúš Babják is a doctoral candidate at the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, where his research focuses on international relations, with an emphasis on the commercialization of the space sector, related capacity development in Slovakia, and the implications of space infrastructure for security and defense. Since 2025, he has served as Chairman of the Slovak Society for Space Policy. He also acts as the National Point of Contact within the international youth organization Space Generation Advisory Council. In the past, he completed a professional traineeship at the European Union Agency for the Space Programme and a research stay at the University of Vienna, where he contributed to the FutureSpace project focused on the development of European integration with an emphasis on the Ariane space programme. He also has professional experience within Slovak diplomatic structures. Prior to entering academia, he worked at Rádio Slovensko as a foreign news editor and copywriter for the science and technology programme Spektrum.
Vice-chairman – Tomáš Hrozenský has been working since 2018 at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in Vienna, where he currently serves as Associate Director of European Engagement, Communication and Media. He is the author of several ESPI publications on European space policy and space security and, during his tenure at ESPI, has regularly cooperated with the European Space Agency, the European Commission, and other actors in the European space sector. Within the Slovak Society for Space Policy, he served for nine years as Chairman of the association. Tomáš holds both a Master’s degree and a PhD in International Relations from the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. In the past, he completed a Fulbright fellowship at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in the United States and was also a member of the Space Security Index 2017 research project.
Vice-chairman – Dr. Lucius Klobučník serves as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law of Aston University in Birmingham, United Kingdom, where he lectures on intellectual property law and the law of new technologies. In the past, he worked as a copyright consultant at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) within the United Nations system. In 2021 and 2019, he coached law students from Trnava University and Comenius University for an international space law moot court competition. He completed his doctoral studies at Queen Mary University of London and at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. His research activities in the field of space law and policy include, for example, a publication on the legal aspects of asteroid mining.
Member – RNDr. Peter Vereš, PhD., focuses on planetary defense, the research of small bodies of the Solar System, near-Earth objects, and space debris. He studied astronomy and astrophysics at the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics of Comenius University. He has worked at the University of Hawaii, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Caltech/NASA JPL) in Pasadena, and the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, USA. In 2026, he is a visiting exchange researcher at Comenius University.
Member – Lenka Tkáčová is a graduate of Security Studies at the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. She worked at the startup Slido and also at the Slovak Space Office, where she was responsible for communication and educational activities. She also served as the Slovak delegate to the European Space Agency in the areas of communication and education. She currently works at Kajo services as a Project Manager and is also an external student at the Department of Air Transport at University of Žilina.
Honorary member – Peter Pindják, MPIA, PhD. is an expert on the security aspects of outer space utilization. He studied political science and security and intelligence studies at U.S. universities in Louisiana and Pennsylvania. His master’s thesis on the militarization of space was for several years included among the required readings for the course Space and National Security at the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his doctoral studies at the Armed Forces Academy of General Milan Rastislav Štefánik. During his tenure at the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic from 2012 to 2014, he represented the ministry in the Interministerial Commission for Cooperation between Slovakia and the European Space Agency (ESA). Since 2014, he has been an employee of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, where he established and, in 2016–2017, coordinated the departmental working group Task Force Space. He is the author of the ministry’s first space policy concept, approved by the Slovak Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016. He currently serves as Deputy Head of the Permanent Mission of the Slovak Republic to the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and other international organizations in Vienna. In the past, he served as a diplomat at the Permanent Mission of the Slovak Republic to the United Nations in New York, where his portfolio also covered the peaceful uses of outer space. In 2019–2020, he was Vice-Chair of the Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, where he chaired several meetings attended by senior representatives of United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He actively lectures and publishes in professional and academic journals on the security aspects of outer space utilization.
Intern – Adam Cagala is a student of International Relations at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University. Within the Slovak Society for Space Policy, he serves as an intern, focusing on content creation, social media management, and other supporting activities. He is interested in issues of space policy, particularly the economic and security aspects and the relations between states and corporations in the context of global political changes.
Intern – Martina Olexová has been serving as an intern at the Slovak Society for Space Policy since January 2026, where she focuses primarily on digital content creation, website administration, and social media management. She has gained experience in strategic communication, marketing, and project management in both the public and private sectors, including roles at the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in Brussels, the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic, and Be Lenka. She is a graduate of the Master’s programme in Political Science at the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica and, since October 2025, has been an MBA student specializing in marketing at Digital University.
Projects:
SSPA is engaged in space law and policy in 3 main areas: security and peaceful uses of outer space, economic and technical development, international norms, rules and regulations. We are currently working on several projects, regarding integration of Slovakia to ESA, preparations for the first terminological dictionary in the field of space policy, security and law in Slovakia, an academic initiative at Slovak universities focused on seminars and workshops on space law and policy, and publishing analytical studies under a series title SSPA Report.
SSPA members actively take part in international conferences, including the United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS) in Vienna, and are particularly following the development of the European space policy in light of the planned adoption of the EU space strategy during the Slovak presidency of the EU Council in the second half of the year 2016 (SK PRES).
We are intensively dealing with international legal aspects connected with construction and planned launch of the first Slovak satellite – SKcube, and the further development of the national legal and regulatory framework considering any national space activity. The national register of space objects in Slovakia was created in March 2016 partly thanks to the cooperation of SSPA with the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic and Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic. Moreover, SSPA was invited by Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic as an observer to the Committee for Space Activities in the Slovak Republic, the inter-ministerial body established by the Minister of Education in 2015.
Regarding national and international space policy issues, in June 2016 we organized in the premises of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic under the SK PRES label an event called “Towards the European Space Strategy”. The event was attended by representatives of state administration, academy and the third sector. An exceptional success of the SSPA was in 2016 the invitation of the Slovak Atlantic Commission to organize an international panel concerning space policy at a well-known GLOBSEC Conference in Bratislava.
For supporting the public outreach and sharing the knowledge and interest for space, SSPA was in 2015 a national coordinator for organizing events within the “World Space Week” in the Slovak Republic (4.-10. 10. 2015). The main topic of the event was space exploration. The event was attended by many Slovak organizations, including Astronomical Club in Bratislava, Regional centre for youth in Košice, Observatory in Žilina and Observatory in Partizánske. During the World Space Week the SSPA organized a competition to win a ticket to the movie “The Martian” in cooperation with the film distribution company Barracuda Movie.