ESA's Space Safety Programme has now opened the competitiveness segment for ideas within the COSMIC (COre, Small Missions iIncl. CREAM) activity area. This segment encompasses ideas related to Space Weather, Planetary Defence, Space Debris, and Clean Space. Selected ideas will receive co-funding from ESA, aiming to significantly enhance Europe's competitiveness in the space industry, particularly in the context of space safety.

Space Safety is an increasingly important field that offers significant business opportunities. In line with its Agenda2025, ESA is committed to promoting commercialization and strengthening space safety. The Agency supports the European space industry by streamlining the innovation process, enabling the transition from technology to fully realised commercial products and services.

Within the competitiveness segment of the Space Safety Programme, ESA supports the last mile efforts in developing a product or service for the space safety market. To this end, ESA will serve as a trial test user and early adopter, thereby reducing business risks and accelerating the development process.

Open Innovation Platform

To effectively speed up the commercialisation of Space Safety efforts, it is important for ESA’s activities to be industry-driven and have fast-track procurement processes to shorten time-to-market. Ideas will be evaluated via ESA’s Open Innovation Platform (OSIP),  an idea platform initially set up under ESA Discovery & Preparation to allow easy ingestion of novel and innovative ideas from both ESA colleagues and external participants.
 

Open for business: competitive segment Space Safety Programme

The general objective of the Space Safety Programme is to contribute to the protection of our planet, humanity, and assets in Space and on Earth from hazards originating in Space and to provide a service to Europe’s society by providing safety from such hazards. 

Proposals for activities in all areas of Space Safety are welcome. This includes:

• Space Weather
• Planetary Defence
• Space Debris and Clean Space

The competitiveness segment seeks to reduce the risk of turning a new space safety-related technology into a business. Accordingly, the development of the technology needs to be completed and must have reached technical readiness level 6 (learn more about Technical Readiness Levels) as a requirement for submission. Key to the success of the proposal will be the credibility of technical and managerial proposal plus the business case.

How to submit your proposal

The Space Safety Competitive Segment channel is open for ideas on an ongoing basis, without any specific deadline for submissions. The process begins when an idea is proposed, and if everything goes smoothly, the overall timeline for evaluation and selection is approximately three months.
 

OSIP call for ideas process in two stages

The proposal goes through two main stages. The first stage involves filling out a shorter and more straightforward form to provide an outline of the idea. Once this initial submission has been positively assessed, the next step is to submit a more comprehensive Full Proposal, which provides a more detailed description of the idea.

You can find out more details on the requirements and who exactly can submit a proposal in the Space Safety Competitive Segment call for ideas.