For two days experts from all regions of Galileo Masters debated on the best ideas submitted to this year’s edition of the competition. The meeting took place in the ESTEC facility, which is part of the European Space Agency.
The international experts meeting from all European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) regions is one of the most important milestones in this contest. At that meeting the best ideas sent to the “Galileo Masters” are evaluated and dedicated discussions take place on each proposal. At the end of that meeting voting takes place and the best idea is selected.
Before this expert meeting took place, a series of national meetings were held in each of the regions participating to ESNC 2014. The Polish expert meeting took place on the 29th of August in Warsaw, at the Agency of Industry Development premises.
This year’s international meeting of experts was held between the 15th and 16th of September. The meeting took place in the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), which belongs to the European Space Agency (ESA). Located at ESTEC are the ESA’s Business Incubation Centres (BIC), where some of past winners of “Galileo Masters” develop their ideas. At that meeting, apart from international experts, ESA, GSA and DLR representatives were present. The Polish region was represented by Mr Krzysztof Kanawka.
The discussions and decisions made during this meeting are confidential until the Final Gala of ESNC, which will take place on the 23rd-24th of October in Berlin. At that Gala the results and names of the winners will be officially announced. The regional winners and finalists will be announced at regional ESNC galas. The Polish regional gala will probably take place in the beginning of November.
The European Space Navigation Competition (ESNC) is a pan-European event, which aims to select and promote the best ideas related to satellite navigation (GNSS). It is commonly known as “Galileo Masters”, which refers to the name of the main competition prize and to the European navigation system.
This competition is realised in a formula of regional editions, where a region can be a country, state within a country or even a city. This year’s edition has been organised by Kosmonauta.net Ltd., due to own positive experiences in past ESNC events. It is the second time this competition is organised in Poland – the previous time happened in 2012. In total, in 2014 there were 26 regional editions, including countries from outside of Europe, such as Israel and Mexico.
“The active phase” of Galileo Masters was held between the 1st of April and 7th of July. During that period anyone could submit their GNSS application ideas through the ESNC webpage. This competition was open to everyone, including individuals, informal groups, start-ups, established commercial entities as well as research and academic groups.
In total this year’s ESNC gathered 434 submissions. The Polish edition attracted 22 application proposals, which resulted in the fourth place in number of submissions. The same amount of proposals was submitted to the German Hessia and Belgian Flanders regions. It is a higher number of submissions than in some established ESNC regions with a long participation tradition.
