Institute of Space Science (Romania)

The Institute of Space Science (Institutul de Științe Spațiale) is a Romanian space research institute based in Măgurele, near Bucharest. It was established in 1996 as a legal subsidiary of the National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics (INFLPR), though its research lineage traces back to a Cosmic Ray Laboratory founded in 1956. The institute is organized into four laboratories covering high-energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology, space applications and technologies, and space plasma and magnetometry.

It participates in major international physics collaborations, including CERN's LHC-ALICE and LHC-MoEDAL experiments, the Pierre Auger Observatory for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, and the KM3NeT deep-sea neutrino telescope, and it contributes space-plasma instrumentation and analysis to ESA missions such as Cluster, Swarm and Solar Orbiter. On its own account, the institute designed and built EMISAR, a Romanian CubeSat launched into orbit to demonstrate asynchronous space-to-ground data exchange and communications techniques.

The institute is government-funded as part of Romania's national research system and collaborates with ESA and NASA on an ongoing basis, continuing to recruit researchers and participate in international missions as of 2026. Together with the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA), it represents one of the country's two principal public space-sector institutions, with the Institute of Space Science focused on scientific instrumentation and plasma/astroparticle physics research rather than program management.