This competition encourages participants from industry, academia and research to support the High Altitude Pseudo Satellites Platform (HAPS) development by funding innovation prototypes and multi-mission payloads.
This Innovate UK (IUK) competition has been created to develop prototype dual use and multi-mission payloads and solutions for data processing, evaluation and dissemination (PED). The aim is to complement the High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS) platform development by addressing priority needs and challenges within sensing, datalinks and PED. HAPS refers to an unmanned airship, plane or balloon watching over Earth from the stratosphere.
Proposals must show utility in the context of Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) or Maritime Security missions and be compatible with at least one model of stratospheric platform.
Projects must:
- Propose versatile solutions which tackle multiple challenge topics and consider the wider system-of-systems.
- Adhere to payload limits, platform interface requirements, as well as environmental and thermal requirements.
- Conduct ground based testing to demonstrate theoretical compliance with the challenge statements and readiness for experimental flight-testing.
IUK has allocated up to £4 million to fund innovation projects in this competition. Each project’s total costs must be between £100,000 and £2 million.
The competition is open to collaborations only. To lead a project or collaborate with the lead, an organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), public sector organisation, charity or not-for-profit organisation. If the lead is an RTO it must collaborate with two businesses of any size.
The deadline for applications to be submitted is 2 September 2022 (11:00 BST).
How To Apply
Competition dates:
- Open: 18 July 2022
- Competition closing date: 2 September 2022 (11:00 BST)
Applicants are encouraged to read the general guidance for applicants to help their chances of submitting a quality application.
More details can be accessed at the Innovate UK website.