"When I look at the European space sector, I see a huge talent base, with many engineers and scientists having incredibly innovative ideas which they want to bring to fruition."
Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General
ESA aims to accelerate innovation by spearheading the development of cutting-edge competitive European space technologies in key strategic domains (ESA Strategy 2040).
ESA's Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) and this Channel are among the many ways ESA is addressing this challenge.
We are committed to the process of Discovery and are willing to take risks in pursuit of knowledge. We seek diverse perspectives, and we engage with new ideas.
Your idea should showcase innovative approaches or unlock new capabilities and discoveries beyond what is currently known. Authors submitting ideas in this channel should embrace high-risk opportunities where there could be significant benefits.
Ensure your idea is brief, clear, and impactful to resonate with a diverse technical audience. Pay special attention to creating a captivating title, abstract, and picture.
You are encouraged to build a diverse and dynamic research and development network by bridging gaps between people and fields not yet in conversation. Include all relevant colleagues and partners as co-authors, and if you are seeking collaborators, consider submitting your idea openly and exploring ESA's matchmaking platform, esa-match.
ESA's process for inspiring innovative and disruptive research and development begins with the "Discovery element" (www.esa.int/discovery).This Open Channel is, in turn, the main mechanism to initiate Discovery-funded, low technology readiness level (TRL),activities.
This channel offers three main paths for implementing ideas or connecting them to other suitable ESA programmes:
When submitting your idea, you must select one of these three paths. Note that your choice might be revised by the idea coach or the Channel manager where appropriate.
If your idea is best explored through academic research, formulate a clear research question and highlight how it differs from the latest published work (e.g., IEEE, Google Scholar, ESA repositories). Co-sponsored research benefits from fast-track approval, with co-funding confirmation required only in the second step if invited to submit a proposal.
Ideas may also benefit from access to ESA facilities if justified.
Two implementation options are possible:
Examples include:
If your idea involves assessing the feasibility of new technologies, space systems, or software-in-the-loop solutions, explain its novelty compared to past studies. These studies are run by industry as prime and do not include hardware-in-the-loop testing and do not require a letter of industry support.
Examples include:
If you are looking to kickstart the development of new technologies, including those patented by ESA, and targeting commercial applications, clearly outline the leap in capabilities your proposed development will enable compared to current technologies and competing innovations. Early Technology Development activities encompass everything from proof of concept and risk reduction to technology development or ESA Patent commercialisations up to TRL 4. Unlike studies, Early Technology Developments require hands-on hardware experimentation, prototyping, and testing, along with a written statement of industrial interest from a potential customer.
Examples include:
Commercial and technical maturation of ESA’s inventions.
If you have a proposal to advance ESA’s inventions both technically and commercially (with funding from ESA ranging between 20 k€ and 175 k€), you should first identify the application area for the selected invention and the commercial potential for integrating it into a product or service. Ideas submitted for this purpose fall under early technology development activities, so they follow the same implementation rules.
ESA offers its intellectual property on a free license to space companies within its 23 Member States. For use by companies outside of ESA Member States, or for non-space applications, an alternative licensing model applies, which allows ESA to collect royalties.
To consult the ESA patents portfolio, please browse the following link to the ESA Commercialisation Gateway website, where the full portfolio is accessible:
ESA Patents - ESA Commercialisation Gateway
When submitting an idea, please ensure that you reference the relevant ESA patent as specified in the provided link, including its full title.
For additional details about the patents or related references (such as the full patent description), please contact patent@esa.int.
Good ideas not fitting into any of the implementation paths of the Discovery element could be routed to other, more suitable ESA programmes (see below).
Your idea will follow a simple two-phase process consisting of an idea phase and a proposal phase.
The first phase begins with submitting your idea through this channel. Before submission, you can save your ideas as drafts if any mandatory information is missing. Draft ideas are only visible to you – idea coaches and ESA experts can't see them. Authors are encouraged to submit their ideas as soon as the mandatory information is available and keep the box "still working on the idea" ticked, indicating to ESA that you are interested to receive suggestions and comments. Note that a 'submitted' idea is not expected to be finalised.
Once submitted, your idea will progress through several stages: from "qualification" to "community discussion," then "evaluation", and finally "selection" (or "archival"). You have full visibility of your idea's status at all times (visible above the title of ideas) and can edit and improve your idea as needed. To indicate satisfaction with its quality and no further planned modifications, tick the box "ready for evaluation." (Until your idea enters into evaluation, you can still edit and improve it, including changing the marking to "still working on the idea")
Upon submission, you must select an idea category. Based on this choice, an idea coach will be assigned to perform initial eligibility checks and involve relevant ESA experts. Choosing the wrong category may cause delays in qualification and limit interactions with ESA experts.
Eligible ideas are qualified and move to the Community Discussion phase, signaling that the idea is likely to be evaluated soon and encouraging ESA experts to provide comments to help improve the idea's chances of passing evaluation. Ideas marked as publicly visible at this stage allow also feedback from others besides ESA. The interaction process can vary in duration due to the nature of proposed activities. We recommend authors whose ideas have never been discussed with ESA prior to submission to wait at least 2 to 4 weeks (to have the opportunity to receive feedback) before ticking the “ready for evaluation” box in their submission form.
The idea phase culminates with the idea evaluation. An evaluation session is nominally started every third Friday of the month. This session includes ideas that are in community discussion and marked “ready for evaluation” by their authors. Once under evaluation, an idea can no longer be edited. The evaluation itself will last for about 2-3 weeks, after which, authors will receive an automatic notification about the outcome from OSIP:
Authors should note that ideas that fail the evaluation cannot be re-submitted. Authors are therefore encouraged to actively seek feedback and improve their ideas before marking them as "ready for evaluation."
Authors of ideas which pass the evaluation are invited to mature their idea into a proposal, for which they are given a standardised online proposal template in a dedicated Channel on OSIP. Authors will be able to edit the newly created proposal form (similar to the idea form) in the dedicated Channel – the link to the proposal form will be provided upon idea selection.
The proposals will be subject to a competitive evaluation. Only proposals of very high quality according to the evaluation criteria will be selected for funding. Selected activities are implemented via cooperative agreements.
For more details authors can consult the rules of the dedicated proposal channels:
Please note, that for Study and Early Technology Development the provision of the ESA Entity Code is compulsory already at the idea stage. Not providing the ESA Entity Code at the latest 10 calendar days after idea selection automatically disqualifies the idea.
The title, abstract and image of successful proposals that lead to contracts will be automatically made public on the ESA website (e.g. https://activities.esa.int or https://nebula.esa.int), accordingly please make sure that each of these elements reflects the innovative potential of your proposal.
Explore the latest Webinar (23.06.2025) to learn more about the types of ideas we are seeking and to access additional FAQs.
Innovation potential is the main selection criterion for the idea phase. We therefore encourage you to check that what you propose has not already been tried, studied or discarded. The following list provides some direct links to website, databases and collections of activities that ESA is or has been conducting and should help you to avoid proposing duplications:
Since we are looking for novelty and innovation potential in general, please also check other relevant sources like e.g. EU CORDIS or IEEE Xplore, patents (list not exhaustive).
You decide whether you want to submit your idea as confidential (visible to ESA and evaluators only) or as public. In case your idea gets selected and leads to a contract, we will in all cases publish summary information about the activity, including the contractor name, the title, the image, and the abstract from your idea. After finishing the activity, ESA also systematically makes an executive summary publicly available.
While respecting and protecting IP needs and requirements, academic publishing of results is encouraged. Co-sponsored research activities in particular almost systematically lead to publications. Open access peer-reviewed technical and scientific journals of good reputation should be the norm. DOIs of all publications resulting from Discovery element activities should be added to your activity page (https://activities.esa.int). Publications shall acknowledge the support of ESA by adding the following phrase into the acknowledgements or equivalent field of the publication:
Any publicity material prepared by the Contractor shall acknowledge that the activity is/was selected via the Open Space Innovation Platform (https://ideas.esa.int) as a Co-Sponsored Research Agreement/Study/Early Technology Development and carried out under the Discovery programme of, and funded by, the European Space Agency (contract number: 4000xxxxxx).
It shall display the ESA logo and contract number. It shall also carry a disclaimer stating that the view expressed in such publications can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Space Agency.
As much as possible, feasible and practical, such publications should be published open access, following the principles of Plan-S. (Background information and an analysis on open access and Plan-S: A guide to Plan S: the open-access initiative shaking up science publishing)
Ideas not fitting into any of the above three implementation schemes might be re-routed to potentially more suitable other implementation paths within ESA. These operate under different conditions and have their own requirements, timelines, objectives and restrictions. Some of these already use OSIP for their initial submissions, in which case you find them most easily by searching via the "strategic innovation areas" here on OSIP. Please also see the OSIP Help pages in the section “Finding your way around the platform” for a non-exhaustive overview of ESA’s Programmes.
There might be a running Campaign or Channel that addresses the subject of your idea directly. In this case, please consider submitting your idea directly under this Campaign or Channel.
You may contact authors of public ideas directly via the comments below the idea. For general match making, please consider the ESA industry matchmaking portal ESA Match
The Channel is open for submissions for participants registered in one of ESA Member States or Associate Member States (esa.int).
For general conditions of participation in this Campaign, please refer to the OSIP General Conditions of Participation (OSIP-General_Conditions_of_Participation.pdf).
Please note that participation is restricted to entities eligible to do business with ESA (see also here).
In addition to the provisions in the General Conditions of Use of the Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) (e.g. article VI) and the General Conditions of Participation to Campaigns and Channels (OSIP-General_Conditions_of_Participation.pdf) organised by ESA in OSIP (e.g. article 4.3) idea will be excluded, which:
ESA reserves the right to exclude any ideas based on the above criteria. By submitting an idea to this Channel, participants understand and accept this.
If not requested otherwise by ESA, all communication about ideas or linked to an idea must remain on OSIP and within the idea private discussion or comments section.
The key evaluation criteria for the idea phase is its innovation potential. This means that ideas should clearly describe what is new compared to published concepts, techniques or processes and how it would innovate or unlock new capabilities and discoveries beyond what is currently known. Ensure your idea is brief, clear, and impactful to resonate with a diverse technical evaluation board.
The evaluation criteria for the second round proposal evaluation is published in the proposal channels:
Evaluation planning
Indicative planning for start dates of monthly evaluation sessions. Each evaluation session typically is open for 7–10 days, authors will get the feedback from the idea evaluation sessions typically 2 weeks after evaluation closure):
(Please note that by default all ideas that are marked as "ready for evaluation" by the authors and which have been qualified would enter the respective next evaluation round. Authors can edit their ideas until the evaluation round starts, but not once it has already started. See here how to edit ideas. Note that ideas that have been evaluated once cannot be resubmitted.)
