News

On World Ocean Day, which takes place every year on 8 June, people around the world celebrate our shared ocean and take action to protect and restore it for future generations. Today we take a look at how EU Space contributes to these efforts by providing data that improves our understanding of the ocean ecosystem and enables applications and services that help to minimise the impact of human activity on ocean health.

The CASSINI Space Entrepreneurship Initiative is a European Commission entrepreneurial support mechanism that cuts across all components of EU Space Programme. It offers actions targeted at the full entrepreneurial lifecycle - from idea generation to market entry and growth – and covers both the upstream and downstream sectors. As part of the initiative, the first CASSINI Hackathon, on 18-20 June 2021, will challenge participants to leverage space synergies to digitise Europe’s green spaces. To register, click here.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG-DEFIS) has awarded two new H2020 mission evolution studies to assess how the future evolution of European GNSS (EGNSS) could be beneficial for innovative and demanding autonomous applications. The new service contract shall assess the feasibility of an integrity service complementing EGNSS High Accuracy in the 2030+ timeframe on top of the current baseline of EGNSS services to feed the evolving needs in autonomous transport.

The European Union Agency for the Space Programme, EUSPA, is launched today marking the start of a new era for EU Space. Building on the legacy of the European GNSS Agency, EUSPA will take on more responsibilities to create even more opportunities from Space for EU citizens and its economy.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) has launched a new Call for Proposals for the “Acceleration of EGNOS Adoption in Transport”. The objective of the Call is to foster EGNOS uptake in the European aviation, maritime, inland waterways and railway sectors. The deadline for submissions is 19 July 2021. An informative webinar on the call will be held on 23 April; to register, click here. For more information on the call, click here.

Beacon Awareness Day (#406Day) on April 6 is an opportunity to celebrate the amazing work carried out by Search and Rescue teams around the world that risk their lives on a daily basis to save people in distress. It also aims to remind the owners of Search and Rescue beacons the need to register their beacon and test them in a regular basis, in particular for what concerns their batteries and, for those already registered, to update their Cospas-Sarsat contact details.

GNSS.asia, a Horizon-2020 project of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) that is helping create partnerships between GNSS industries in Europe and Asia, has launched the Soft-Landing programme – a start-up support initiative that will prepare European GNSS-based innovators for scalable success in Asia. Applications should be submitted by 26 March 2021. Interested? Apply here.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) together with the European Commission have published an Information Note on the Galileo High Accuracy Service, providing an overview of the main characteristics of the service, along with information on features such as service levels, target performance, an implementation roadmap, and an overview of the target markets for the service. You can download the Information Note here.

The EUROCAE “ED-277 - Minimum Aviation System Performance Standard for Aircraft Emergency Locator Transmitter Remote Command Via Return Link Service” has been published and is available. It describes the characteristics of remote command via the Return Link Service for Emergency Locator Transmitter Distress Tracking - ELT(DT) - in particular for remote beacon activation and deactivation. Today, only Galileo provides Return Link capability.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) is excited to announce the winners in this year’s MyGalileoSolution & MyGalileoDrone competitions. After a lively debate, the jury has selected the winning teams in both competitions based not only on their innovative use of key Galileo differentiators, but also on their market-oriented approach and potential for wide uptake. The winning teams were announced during Entrepreneurship Day, hosted by the GSA on 2 March. And so, without further ado, the winners are….