These small projects have now been awarded and are now all underway
Virtual Briefing for Potential Bidders
An online meeting was held on Tuesday 13 August 2024 between 10:00 and 12:00 BST.
Click here to view the presentation
Click here to view the Questions and Answers discussed
Clarifications
In Section 5.1 of the Announcement of Opportunity it states that “The payment plan should be constructed so that no more than 20% is paid at/soon after kick-off against one or more outputs (e.g. the Project Management Plan), with the remainder at the final review acceptance.” Please note that it is also acceptable to include a payment milestone at the mid-term review.
Clarification on Facility Enhancements:
Proposals seeking funding for facility enhancements should make it clear how the facility will be made available to the wider EO community, for example on a commercial basis or through collaborative projects, etc.
On behalf of the UK Space Agency, the Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) is pleased to announce a call for small projects in four categories:
- Pathfinder grants of up to £100k, to support feasibility studies or industrial research.
- Rapid enhancements to facilities for space-based EO of up to £200k, e.g. to enable testing, calibration, and validation of instrumentation, in support of a mission-related requirement.
- Up to £50k for end-to-end simulator development to raise the Scientific Readiness Level of CEOI-supported technology.
- Up to £50k for ground, balloon or drone-based demonstration of CEOI-supported technology, or testing in a relevant space environment, to raise Technology Readiness Level.
The indicative total budget for the call is circa £1M. Additional PV funds will be required from industrial bidders as defined by State Subsidy regulations. This funding opportunity is open to industry, HEIs and other research organisations based in the UK.
The selected projects are expected to begin in November 2024 and must be completed by 31st March 2025. As before, the guiding principles for the selection of proposals will be science excellence, societal impact, and/or commercial potential, but will also consider feasibility and affordability.
The CEOI has the objective to realise an excellent, internationally competitive, national Earth observation instrument technology research and development programme. It achieves this by building UK academic and industrial capability in EO, and by funding the development of advanced EO instrumentation through a series of themed and open calls.
This call was released on Monday 5 August 2024 with a closing date of Friday 13 September at 12:00 BST.
Intention to Bid
Applicants are required to notify the CEOI of their intention to bid by email to the CEOI Call Administrator CEOIAdmin@le.ac.uk using the pro-forma in Section 11 of the Announcement of Opportunity (AO), by Monday 19 August 2024 at 12:00 BST. The purpose of this is to gauge the size of the response and to inform the selection of reviewers. The notification and information therein will be held in confidence as described in Section 8 of the AO. Note that failure to submit the intention to bid, does not exclude you from bidding.
If you are unable to bid due to, for example, lack of resource, lack of facilities or lack of access to matched funding, please submit the form and tell us the reasons why you are not bidding into this round.
Application Documents
Link to Announcement of Opportunity (including Application and Intention to Bid Forms)
Link to the CEOI Grant Agreement 2024
Link to Model Teaming Agreement
Link to Subsidy Control Declaration Form
Please note: These documents are all amendable and therefore present as a Word document. Therefore, they do not always open as a separate tab, please review your “downloads” for documentation after clicking the links