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Competition summary: space to innovate

Updated 17 May 2019

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/competition-space-to-innovate/competition-summary-space-to-innovate

1. Background

The space environment is becoming increasingly congested and contested. Satellites are becoming smaller and are being launched more frequently. This creates many challenges as well as opportunities for defence and security.

2. The Competition

This Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) call aims to aid UK Defence and Security to develop future space technologies.

2.1 What are we looking for?

The focus of this DASA call is to fund research into space technologies that may not otherwise be developed in the civil space industry. This will address a set of specific problems in the space domain, as outlined below.

We would like to focus on 4 challenge areas:

  1. Technologies for defending future UK space assets
  2. Novel sensing and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) enablers
  3. Characterisation of objects in space and their intent
  4. Overcoming the technical issues of ‘Space to Sea Level’ optical communications

2.2 What we are not looking for

  • Technologies or systems relating to space launch
  • Space technologies where the commercial market is already strongly invested (e.g. general satellite communications)
  • Proposals relating to human space flight and exploration
  • Proposals which could be considered an irresponsible use of space (e.g. generating unnecessary debris, or violating international treaties)
  • Areas which constitute research into the specific areas of:
    • Inter-satellite links
    • Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)
    • Security and encryption of optical communications

The competition is envisaged to have 2 phases; phase 1 of this competition is intended to demonstrate proof of concepts that can be further developed and integrated during later phases.

3. Competition key information

The total funding for all phases of this competition is expected to be at least £2.25 million. However, each phase 1 proposal will be capped at £200k.

This DASA competition is currently planned to open in April / May 2019 when the full document will be released on our website. Proposals must be submitted to the DASA submission service, for which you will have to register.

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