The second day of the EU Space Week event in Helsinki opened with an overview of the final tranche of project calls under the Horizon 2020 space programme. The final Horizon 2020 EGNSS (Galileo and EGNOS) calls are now open, with a closing date of 5 March 2020. The session covered research and innovation topics across Copernicus, EGNOS and Galileo programmes and also took a look to the future with Horizon Europe.

Concrete funding opportunities that are available to space tech start-ups were in focus at the MyGalileoApp competition, held at the European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) headquarters in Prague on 7 November. At an investors panel discussion held as part of the event, start-ups heard about some of the concrete funding opportunities that are available to them.

The MyGalileoApp competition has contributed to the creation of an ecosystem that helps start-ups and other innovators to build innovative applications and grow while enabling both private and public investors to find and invest in projects of interest to them. At the MyGalileoApp finals, which took place at the European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) Prague headquarters at the start of November, start-ups heard about some of the key elements that they will need to succeed in a highly-competitive marketplace.

Once again, the Galileo Masters – and its sister award programme the Copernicus Masters – was the glittering highlight of EU Space Week 2019 that took place in Helsinki on 3 to 5 December. In its 15th year the Galileo Masters continues to attract the attention of some of the brightest and best minds. Topics submitted to the competition this year ranged through digitisation, big data, the sharing economy and artificial intelligence (AI), amongst others, but all with a common theme: the use of European Global Navigation Satellite Systems (EGNSS) Galileo and/or EGNOS to benefit society.