Thales Alenia Space facilities in Cannes and Toulouse are taking part in France's National Workplace Wellbeing Week, which is focusing this year on "Working Together", with an array of engaging initiatives.

"Working Together" — a very timely topic, as more than ever before people need to come together at both a professional and personal level to share in some fun activities and bring a little light relief during the ongoing health crisis, the worst of which seems to be behind us.

Absolutely FabLabulous

Employees at our French production facilities ara invited to get involved in a range of activities, including meditation and sophrology sessions in Cannes. More in line with our business activities, our FabLabs are offering people the opportunity to learn all about virtual reality, laser cutting and 3D printing through a series of workshops.

Thales Alenia Space now has 4 FabLabs, in Toulouse, Cannes, Charleroi, and one in Rome. Our FabLabs are open to all Thales Alenia Space employees to encourage their inventiveness. The aim is to foster and incubate new ideas and solutions by providing fast prototyping resources, including both hardware and software. Above all, the FabLabs connect skills and people, allowing them to share and explore ideas, rounding out the company's industrial facilities. Thales Alenia Space FabLabs were set up by the Innovation Cluster, which is geared to strengthening our culture of innovation within our company by unleashing the creative potential and entrepreneurial spirit of our workforce to develop disruptive concepts for industrial, technological and business applications.

Stratospheric demo

Also on the agenda is an opportunity to climb onboard Stratobus through a virtual reality demonstration. A perfect fit with satellite systems, Stratobus is an autonomous stratospheric multimission platform, midway between a UAV and a satellite. Intended to undertake regional civil and military missions for telecommunications, navigation and Earth observation applications, the Stratobus airship is designed to operate at an altitude of 20 kilometers (above jet streams and regular air traffic).

"Destination moon" with the ESPRIT demonstrator

Another exciting feature of National Workplace Wellbeing Week at Thales Alenia Space is an invitation to go onboard the upcoming lunar space station, Gateway, through a thrilling virtual reality demo of ESPRIT (European System Providing Refueling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications), the logistics module. Thales Alenia Space is playing a major role in the development of the future space station. As well as being prime contractor for two key modules, ESPRIT and I-HAB, for ESA, we are also developing the pressurized section of HALO, the habitation and logistics module, for Northrop Grumman.

So there's a lot to look forward to with this exciting line-up of events, which is of course being organized in complete compliance with current health, safety and physical distancing guidelines. Workplace Wellbeing Week is aligned with Thales Alenia Space and the Thales Group's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments and forms part of our continuous improvement initiatives to strengthen our shared performance and engagement, enhance workplace wellbeing and make our company an employer of choice.

Have a great #SQVT, « Semaine de la Qualité de Vie au Travail » in French!

Illustrations © ANACT - © Thales Alenia Space/Briot - © ESA