The 'Space Business' team within NSO gives support to the economic activities of the Dutch space sector, consisting of technology companies (upstream) and service providers (downstream). The team (7 FTE) runs several innovation programs (both national and via ESA), informs the sector about trends, connect relevant (domestic and foreign) stakeholders, stimulates the startup ecosystem and organizes trade missions for the Dutch space sector (incoming and outgoing). As the Director of Space Business I coordinate the activities within the program, take programmatic decisions and chair the team meetings. The current Board of Directors consists of the General Director, the Director of Space Programs and the Director of Space Business.In addition, I represent the Netherlands within the Program Board Earth Observation (PB-EO) of ESA. This board is responsible for (1) the research program FutureEO, (2) ESA's contribution towards the meteorological programs, (3) the Climate Change Initiative, (4) the Incubed business program and (5) the space component of the Copernicus program.

As a Program Manager I coordinated the activities at NSO to stimulate the use of satellite data (EO, GNSS, Satcom). This is done via e.g. workshops, webinars, the provision of satellite data via the Satellite Data Portal and the SBIR innovation program. The team members sit together with potential users (mostly governmental) and try to look at possibilities to improve their work with the use of satellite data.On an European level, I represented the Netherlands towards the European Commission and the European Space Agency (PB-EO) in the field of Earth Observation. As the delegate towards the Copernicus Committee I coordinated the Dutch activities within the Copernicus program.

As a Senior Advisor Satellite Applications I stimulated the use of satellite data within the Netherlands. One of my tasks was to give lead to the Satellite Data Portal in which satellite data is purchased and centrally distributed among Dutch users. I coordinated the Copernicus activities within the Netherlands and translated the Dutch needs towards the Copernicus Committee and User Forum. In addition, I represented the Netherlands towards ESA, first in the DOSTAG meetings and thereafter in the Program Board Earth Observation (PB-EO). Within this role I also coordinated the newly established Incubed Innovation Program.

Started at NSO with promoting the use of satellite data. This was boosted with the establishment of the Satellite Data Portal (2012 - present) of which I was project leader from the start. Furthermore, I was responsible for the Dutch research program GO and was the Dutch delegation leader towards the ESA DOSTAG meetings.

Time-variable gravity field modelling

The topic of my PhD research was "Functional and stochastic modelling of satellite gravity data". Using the algorithms I developed, it is possible to re-weight data sets in a statistical optimal way (Variance Component Estimation). Moreover, it enables the re-weighting of the observations seperately (treatment of outliers).The software was used in several applications in the field of gravity field modelling. As the problems contain large numbers of observations and unknowns, Monte Carlo simulations were necessary to compute the data weights.More information and a free download of the thesis can be found athttp://www.ncg.knaw.nl/eng/publications/Geodesy/67VanLoon.html

Stochastic modelling

As part of my MSc program, I went on internship at the Danish National Survey and Cadastre (KMS), presently part of the Danish National Space Center. My primary task was to clean the gravity data base of the National Gravity Data Base (NGK) from erroneous data. This was done by comparing them to geoid models and independent altimetric data.