News | 14.11.2019
General notice for UK applicants: In conformity with the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement*, the UK and persons or entities established in the UK continue to be eligible to receive Union funds under actions carried out in direct, indirect or shared management, which implement Union programmes and activities committed under the MFF 2014-2020 until the closure of those Union programmes and activities. When restrictions apply, these will be clearly specified in the call for proposals.
*Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community
UK researchers and innovators will be eligible to collaborate with European partners after Brexit given the majority of H2020 projects are open to third country participation. A “no deal” exit means the government guarantee and extension will ensure the UK’s transition from full to third country membership is handled with as little disruption as possible. The Space Call falls under this bracket. If the UK leaves the EU without a deal the UK Government will support continued UK participation in H2020 when the UK would become a third country. UK participants should be eligible to bid for, participate and lead on H2020 projects open to third country participation with UK participation in H2020 projects to be funded by the UK government via the guarantee and guarantee extension, distributed by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The summary of the H2020 guarantee is as follows:
There is an error in the Guidance Document. The correct sentence should read “All deliverables as requested by [AD25-30]”, which means that the deliverables need to be coherent with the applicable documents AD25-30 listed in the Guidance Document in conformity with the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS).
The purpose of the demonstrator is to provide a baseline for next-generation missions that will feature in the new space eco-system, which will feature open architectures, greater modularity and standardization of technologies. By formulating a demonstrator that combines solutions for short-term market needs (ie servicing of platforms in orbit) that can be extrapolated into solutions for foreseen long-term needs (ie reconfigurable satellites, on-orbit assembly of platforms) we will maximise the output and impact of the project and prepare European competitiveness and advantage for this anticipated eco-system. They should consider adding functional building blocks to their system to increase the aforementioned modularity and flexibility.
As for the percentages required, it’s down to the effort of the consortium to design a mission that will effectively deliver all of the above. There is no prescription on this. What is required is that Europe delivers an IOD in 2025 (tbc) that not only demonstrates effective state-of-the-art capability but significantly explores the potential for application in new markets. The full answer is in the Call Text.
It is not required that the selected technologies be matured to TRL 9 in OG12 and 13. The mission definition to be written by this consortium must define how the subsequent mission itself will develop and mature the technology to TRL 8 (pre-launch) and 9 (post-test). OG12/13 will be required to mature their selected technologies up to TRL 5-6 only.
The requirement is simply to be used as a scope for designing the mission. The actual mission is still subject to ongoing negotiations The year 2025 is indicative, if the proposals go for a demonstrator that could be ready before or later, need to be properly justified in the proposal, taking into account the expected state of the art for the selected year.
We want to ensure that there is no duplication of effort across the two successful proposals (for example, where similar/identical technologies are selected for maturation), so the distribution of tasks and responsibilities will be allocated across the two projects to ensure complementarity.
Active debris removal is certainly not out of scope as it represents an emerging market. However, it is clear that other operators and agencies already have developed effective capabilities in this arena, and that it does not represent an effective springboard for more long-term aspirations, which is the purpose of this demonstrator.
The final budget will be confirmed in the Horizon Europe work programme. M€50-100 is the indicative budget, and the final budget selected need to be perfectly analysed in the proposal and any deviation shall be justified.
Other solutions that fully achieve the objective of the call and the demonstrator specifically can be considered. The proposal would need to justify convincingly why such an approach has been selected and demonstrate that the approach achieves the requested objective.
The ultimate objective of the demonstrator is to provide confidence about the business case approach by the proposer. If the business case implies the existence of two spacecraft configuration then the proposer will have to demonstrate how a single spacecraft configuration in the demonstration mission can provide confidence.
There is no a priori competitive advantage for proposals with partners that have already participated to prior SRC activities (OGs); however proposals will need to demonstrate how the consortium will bring together the necessary expertise and how access to and work with the building blocks products is planned.
Applicants that so wish should contact SRC partners directly, there will be no arbitration of any kind during proposal preparation phase.
During the Grant Agreement Preparation phase after the selection of OG12 and 13, however, the REA with the support of the PSA will look into such aspects to ensure that the Collaboration Agreement conditions are respected and that same conditions apply to all grants.
It is important that the applicants submit proposals that are in-line with their long term strategy, as also stated in the Guidance Document and the Work Programme. However, as also mentioned in the Guidance Document “The activity in subject shall consider a range of future mission scenarios, including those addressed by existing OGs, but not to the exclusivity of others.”
So, the proposal must contain some of the use cases investigated in OG7-OG9 and can also introduce additional ones.
As of now HOTDOCK is not been considered to be a Common Building Block of the SRC despite being used in OG8, 9 &11. The requirements for being a CCB need to fulfil the same conditions for IPR, Open documentation & TRL. Consortia are free to plan and design their proposals incorporating the HOTDOCK interface, but until the above conditions are met the technology cannot be considered to be a CBB.
UPDATE(23/12/2019): HOTDOCK is now considered a Common Building Block of the SRC and can be used in proposals submitted to the 27-TEC call. The relevant documents will be made available on the PERASPERA website together with the applicable documents from the Operational Grants (OGs).
The added value of OG14 is the development of the advanced cooperative mobility capability for exploration of hard-to-reach/previously inaccessible areas, such as craters, caves, gullies, lava tubes etc, which has not been investigated thus far in the SRC. The other differentiator is the inclusion of a detailed case study for the terrestrial/commercial application of the technologies being developed in this OG.
The proposals will be evaluated on the strength of their individual justifications for their selections. For example, a proposal that decides to focus on the exploration of caves shall reference existing scientific publications on Martian caves and why they are of scientific interest. Another aspect in their justification has to be the relevance to specific terrestrial applications and the exploitation of the same technology in those applications.
As clearly stated at page 24 of the Guidelines: “ In detail, the demonstrator shall put together: 1. An ADvanced Robotic Explorer System (ADRES) involving multiple Robotic Explorer Units (REU), …”. It means that a REU is a Robotic Explorer Unit and an ADRES System is a system consisting of two or more REUs.
If for UAV you mean an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, then these can be considered REU also if they can be equipped as autonomous explorer robots, then with the necessary subsystems that make them able to perform autonomously:
These are all of the required performances for which they can be defined REU, as indicated in the Guidelines.For a basic and more simple performance, a UAV could be implemented as a REU subsystem.
The ADRES has to be able, as system, to perform ascending/descending procedures. It means that a strong slope can’t stop its exploration work but the difficulties of moving on a strong slope can be overcame from opportune actions of the robotic system. It could be realized through coupling among its REUs or through collaborative actions among its REUs, or combinations among coupling and collaborative actions, also in function of the specific terrain difficulties.
It is strongly suggested to re-use the OG11 heritage for the acquiring RWAs’ state telemetry and interfacing with the EST. It is not mandatory and then not in the Implementation Constraints.