MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – OneWeb is inviting individuals, companies and academic organizations to propose applications for the London-based company’s low-Earth orbit satellite constellation.
Through the Connectivity and Beyond Innovation Challenge, backed by the European Space Agency, OneWeb is looking “for innovative thinkers to collaborate with the company to drive the future of not only communications, but any application that could be unlocked through the OneWeb constellation,” OneWeb said in an Oct. 12 news release.
Challenge winners, in both the industrial and academic/researcher categories, will have opportunities to collaborate with OneWeb. Companies entering the 2022 Innovation Challenge will be eligible to participate in OneWeb’s co-engineering program and will receive a OneWeb satellite model. Industry competitors in ESA member states also will be eligible to receive funding from ESA’s Sunrise Partnership project, which supports demonstrations of advanced space technologies, systems, services and applications.
Academic and research entrants in the 2022 Innovation Challenge could win visits to either the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands or the OneWeb Satellites factory in Florida.
Proposals for the 2022 Innovation Challenge are due Nov. 11. Challenge entries are being accepted at the OneWeb Innovation Challenge website.
OneWeb plans to announce finalists in December. Finalists will be invited to present their proposals to the OneWeb Innovation Challenge jury. Awards are scheduled to be announced in January 2023
OneWeb’s annual Innovation Challenge “aims to harness ideas that will continue to improve and transform satellite-based solutions, bringing forward new proposals for future LEO satellite and ground applications and technologies. OneWeb is looking for industrial partners from any sector, as well as students and research partners, to present proposals for how existing or new technology could be applied to build the LEO constellation-based applications of the future,” according to the news release.
OneWeb “welcomes ideas on how its global LEO constellation could support applications including, but not limited to, telemedicine, crisis response, natural disaster monitoring and data fusion,” the news release added.
OneWeb’s 2021 Innovation Challenge selected five industrial winners: IRT Saint Exupéry, Mbryonics, Morpheus Space, Oledcomm and R3-IoT.
OneWeb continues to collaborate with some of last year’s challenge winners on technology development for our next generation of satellites. A OneWeb spokesperson declined to share information on specific companies or projects, citing confidentiality concerns.
