The Second Polish Industry Incentive Scheme call announced

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On the 3rd of March the European Space Agency opened the Second Polish Industry Incentive Scheme call. Up to 6 million EUR will be granted to Polish space-related projects.

Until the end of 2017 Poland will be in a “transition period” in the European Space Agency (ESA). During that time, each year will feature a dedicated call for projects, known as the Polish Industry Incentive Scheme. Similar calls are now being conducted in two other new ESA member states – the Czech Republic and Romania.

This Industry Incentive Scheme call is limited to Polish entities only. Foreign companies and institutes are allowed to participate, but just as a subcontractor with limited financial participation.

The first Polish Industry Incentive Scheme was announced a year ago resulting with a very good response from the professional community. Over 80 proposals were submitted, from which over 30 were selected for financing. These project have started at the end of 2013 and their results should be known sometime by the end of this year.

The second Industry Incentive Scheme was opened on the 3rd of March 2014. This time Polish entities have less time to prepare their proposals, as the deadline for the call is the 14th of April.  Up to 6 million EUR will be granted to Polish space-related projects, such as hardware, R&D activities, preparatory studies and applications development. The rules of this call are almost the same to these ones from the previous year, with the exception of projects for applications – now the minimum TRL level was raised from 2 to 4.

It is quite possible that this call will be met with similar, if not bigger interest from the Polish space community. On 26th of February, a meeting with ESA representatives was held in Warsaw. On that meeting there were over 100 representatives from various Polish companies, industry, academia and the R&D institutes. This interest clearly indicates that there’s a growing Polish space community as well as awareness of the usefulness of the space-related projects.

ESA and the Polish task force should select projects by August or September.

(PL, ESA)

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