Reinforcing EU autonomous access to space through EU-based spaceports

About this call

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

Reinforcing EU strategic autonomy by reducing non-EU dependencies for accessing space;

Providing an EU access to space necessary for EU space missions through state of the art and innovative solutions;

Diversifying the access to space providers in the EU;

Contributing to expand commercial access to space offers and services in the EU;

Reinforcing Access to Space to ensure that Europe maintains and improve autonomous, reliable and cost-effective access to space.

Scope:

The EU needs to improve the resilience of its access to space for the implementation of EU space programme. New entrants will contribute to this endeavour.

Projects are expected to support EU launch service providers to set up launch pad(s) in the EU territory enabling to perform EU launch services.

Projects are expected to contribute to the development of necessary ground facilities to conduct launch services from the EU territory; e.g. launch integration, storage and operation facilities, launch pad and complex, control command facility, payload processing and integration facilities, tracking means, safety means, propellant storage...

EU launch service provider(s) are expected to be part of the project consortium and be the ultimate users of the resulting facilities making use of EU launch vehicles for providing EU launch services.

Proposals under this topic should explore synergies and be complementary to past actions related to ground segment for launch services, in particular the topics: HORIZON-CL4-2023-SPACE-01-23 and HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-SPACE-11.

All the activities should be complementary with national and ESA on-going or future activities, in particular those decided at the ESA council Ministerial Meeting in November 2025.

In this topic, the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content should be addressed only if relevant in relation to the objectives of the research effort.

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Activities are expected to achieve TRL 8 by the end of the project. The reference TRL definition is the ISO 16290:2013 applicable to the space sector.