The International Institute of Space Commerce has been officially opened at the International Business School at the Nunnery in Douglas.
Key figures in the Industry from the United States were present and the ceremony was performed by Dr So-Yeon Yi (pictured).
She became the first South Korean in space when she spent ten days on the International Space Station earlier this year.
Dr Michael Simpson from the Space University praised Manx initiatives, including the work of the Onchan firm CVI, which provided optics for the recent Mars landing. He said:
"The Isle of Man has a well earned, hard fought, hard-nosed reputation in the finance and insurance industries (but) they want to put manufactured objects into space and make them useful.
"That takes vision (and) it is that kind of vision that has brought us now repeatedly, and evidently increasingly in the future, to the Isle of Man."
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