Support for the development of space technology

The goal of this call is to encourage studies in space technology in order to develop niche sectors and better position Swiss industrial and academic entities with respect to international competition, among others in the frame of ESA activities. The SER/SSO has entrusted the Swiss Space Center EPFL with the implementation of this Call for proposals while the decision will be taken by SER.

The first call of this kind was launched in 2010. The results have been presented a few weeks ago. Nine projects were selected.  In three of them start-ups were industrial partners. Saphyrion developed a hardware module for GNSS receivers. Micos Engineering was involved in two projects, in which an assembly technique for optical systems and a high precision position encoder were developed.

The topics to be proposed for the new call are basically open and must be related to the development of pieces of hardware and/or software for space applications taking into account Swiss technological strengths. With respect to the technology maturity, the selected studies shall aim at increasing the technological readiness level (TRL) of already identified ideas/concepts to reach TRL 3 or 4. The retained studies must involve both academic and industrial partners, their duration will be no longer than 15 months with a ceiling funding of maximum 250 000 CHF.

The full procedure and detailed information on this call for proposals will be published at http://space.epfl.ch/page72041.html from February 27, 2012.

The structure of the expected proposals, the boundary conditions and the selection criteria will be described on the above-mentioned Web site address. The deadline to submit proposals to the Swiss Space Center will be on April 30, 2012, the decision shall be taken by SER next autumn and the studies retained for funding will start before the end of this year.