The European Commission has signed a contract between ESA and SES Techcom SA to initiate the procurement of the In Orbit Demonstration / In Orbit Validation (IOD/IOV) part of the EAGLE-1 end-to-end system. The publication of the Invitation to Tender to procure an IOD/IOV Carrier capable of accommodating a number of experiments compatible with Cubesat is now available on the ESA Star portal.
The European Commission has also concluded the analysis of received applications following the May 2022 Call for Expression of Interest for In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation Experiments. The results have not been made public.
The In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation initiative (IOD/IOV) will allow academia, research organisations, SMEs and larger industrial companies to effectively test new technologies in orbit, reducing the time it would otherwise take to bring them to market. It will also contribute to the EU space skills agenda by exposing students to activities required for designing, building, testing, integrating, and operating a satellite.
The ITT to produce a Cubesat carrier is open until 14 September 2022 at 13:00 CEST.