European Commission and EUSPA announce CASSINI Challenges winners

Today the European Commission together with the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) announced the winners of the CASSINI Challenges final ‘submission of a product’ track. The announcement was made during the CASSINI Entrepreneurship Day in Prague, an annual event that brings together Europe’s most promising space start-ups and leading investors. 

With a total prize purse of EUR 1 million, the CASSINI Challenges aim to support the development of innovative commercial solutions that leverage EU Space data from EGNOS, Galileo and/or Copernicus with either an idea, a prototype or a product, depending on the maturity of a solution.

Regardless of which track one participates in, all solutions targeted one of the following innovation areas:

• Next Generation Challenge: to leverage Galileo and Copernicus data to craft value adding solutions to improve the well-being, safety, security and connectivity of EU citizens.
• Sustainable Future Challenge: to develop innovative solutions for the conservation of ecosystems, sustainable agriculture and management of energy and resources.
• Emerging Technologies Challenge: to design disruptive solutions combining EU Space data with deep technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum technologies, blockchain, Extended Reality or the Metaverse.

With over 90 products submitted and carefully considered, the jury selected the five winners of the CASSINI Challenges Submission of a Product Track:

Emerging Technologies

• Skypuzzler (Denmark): leveraging Galileo’s accurate geo-positioning and, soon, its High Accuracy Service (HAS), Skypuzzler created an integrated Digital Air Traffic Control (iDATC) solution that lets drone operators handle unknown events in real-time.  
• Infraspace (Norway): using AI and data from sources like Copernicus, this cloud-based generative design software assesses such aspects as costs, carbon emissions and spatial utilisation to help enhance decision-making in infrastructure projects.

Next Generation

• Hightek (Italy): the company’s Q.SYSTEM is an end-to-end unmanned aerial firefighting system that leverages UAVs, ground monitoring and predictive tools to provide fast and tailored wildfire detection and mitigation. 

Sustainable Future

• Satelligence (Netherlands): turning data from the Sentinel 1 and 2 satellites into actionable information, this commodity traceability platform helps forestry stakeholders and companies along the entire supply chain comply with the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR). The solution is developed in partnership with the famous sustainability label Fairtrade International. 
• Kanop (France): an innovative SaaS platform that leverages cutting-edge satellite imagery and advanced AI algorithms to deliver accurate, scientifically validated and fully auditable climate and biodiversity data. Allowing for site- or project-specific measurements, the solution enables informed decision-making and allows users to effectively meet their Voluntary Carbon Market and Corporate Sustainability Reporting requirements. 

Each of the five winners took home a cash prize of EUR 100,000. 

The CASSINI Challenges are part of CASSINI, the European Commission’s initiative geared to supporting entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs developing innovative applications and services that leverage the EU Space Programme.

The next edition of the competition will launch later this year.