10-year GSA partnership with European Satellite Navigation Competition

Noordwijk, 17 May 2018 – Galileo is Europe’s global navigation satellite system (GNSS), operated and maintained by the Galileo Service Operator, and under contract with GSA. As Europe's link between space technology and user needs, and in line with Europe's space strategy, the objective of GSA is to keep end-user needs at the centre of Galileo. The 10-year GSA partnership with the ESNC accelerates this objective to help ensure the best use and market uptake of the Galileo programmes: ESNC’s mission is to spur the development of market driven applications based on satellite navigation technologies in everyday life.

Carlo des Dorides, Executive Director of the GSA: “The ESNC is a unique platform for promoting Galileo and EGNOS. At the same time, the innovation competition provides the gateway to a wide range of outstanding business applications leveraging on the European GNSS programmes. For this reason, GSA is a proud partner and has been hosting its own topic-specific challenge since 2008.”

For the last ten years, GSA received more than 800 ideas and business cases in the ESNC and awarded nine winners in the fields of E-mobility, Augmented Reality (AR), UAV, Internet of Things (IoT), safety, security and more. Consequentially, seven companies with prototypes or market-ready products had been established all over Europe. Additionally, GSA helped in pushing forward the European Global Navigation Satellite System (E-GNSS) idea development, promotion, and communications support.

Jelle Reichert, Founder and CTO of JOHAN Sports explains: “Winning the GSA Special Prize of the ESNC in 2013 gave our business a powerful kick-start. The increase of public awareness for our business, the support of the ESNC as well as the ESA BIC network with its location in Noordwijk helped us to acquire international business partners. We highly recommend this innovation competition and space ecosystem to fellow innovators and entrepreneurs.”

This year’s GSA Special Prize Challenge is looking for innovative E-GNSS downstream applications with clear market uptake perspectives concerning the “When and Where? - Exact timing and positioning matters”. Together with cash prizes, the challenge winner will benefit from extensive promotion through GSA’s marketing channels and relevant industry events. Furthermore, the winning idea can get access to a tailored E-GNSS Accelerator business support package worth EUR 62,000 (if eligible). Business ideas can be submitted until 31 July 2018. For more details on this year's GSA challenge and the prize, please see www.esnc.eu/prize/gsa-2018.

The GRC was the perfect location to launch the ESNC on an international level. It supports the provision of services to the Galileo core system and its users. The additional accuracy and availability provided by Galileo, monitored by GRC and operated by GSA, enable a range of new applications and services, which are also scouted in Europe’s leading innovation competition for respective solutions, the ESNC. For more information please visit www.gsa.europa.eu.

Additionally, the ESNC is complemented by the E-GNSS Accelerator to empower the transformation of great ideas into commercially viable solutions through a tailored business coaching service, on top.

About ESNC
Initiated by AZO Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen, German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Bavarian ministry of economic affairs & media, the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) today is the leading network for satellite navigation. The ESNC annually awards the best services, products, and business ideas using satellite navigation in everyday life, spurring the development of respective market-driven applications. For 14 years, the international innovation competition serves as an accelerating instrument for spaceârelated entrepreneurs and startups, providing Europe with novelties. Since 2004, more than 11,500 developers took part with an overall prize pool worth 13 Mio. EUR for more than 300 winners and about 240 international judges assigned with the evaluation of submissions. For more information please see www.esnc.eu.