On May 25-26 the ActInSpace innovation contest will bring entrepreneurs, students, job seekers, developers and creative minds together in over 60 cities across 5 continents to work on real-life challenges and to design innovative services and applications using space technologies and data. This year the European GNSS Agency (GSA) has set three challenges in the contest.
Initiated by the French Space Agency (CNES) 
and supported by the European GNSS Agency and European Space Agency (ESA), ActInSpace aims to demonstrate the socio-economic potential of the space sector and show how it can have a positive impact on our daily lives. By demonstrating that space is a vector of innovation for employment and economic development, the contest hopes to boost start-up creation by encouraging young people to leverage space technologies in their businesses.
GSA Challenges
For this year’s event, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) has set three challenges, the first of which – Geocaching by Satellite - asks participants to use Galileo to develop an innovative geocaching game relying on GNSS positioning. For the second GSA challenge – Art with Satellites – teams should develop an app to draw and write in a map using satellite navigation and the users’ movements by leveraging on Galileo-enhanced positioning.
Finally, the GNSS Satellites Selector challenge asks hackathon participants to design an app that allows them to calculate the Position Velocity and Time (PVT) solution by employing their favourite GNSS constellations and, of course, Galileo. By comparing the data obtained by single satellites, they should propose selection algorithms for satellite constellations based on different criteria.
GSA prize
During the contest the GSA will present its Galileo Geekie Award to the team considered to have best responded to one of the above challenges. The lucky winner will be selected to present their application at European Space Week 2018, the largest gathering of GNSS and Earth Observation experts in Europe, to be held in Marseille on 3-6 December. The GSA will offer the winner a three-day stay at the conference and the possibility to present their application idea.
Bringing creative minds together
The competition is open to teams of from two to five people made up of individuals - business creators, students, researchers, entrepreneurs, developers, users, creators and space experts, job seekers, etc. and/or private legal entities (associations, companies), represented by an individual delegated to participate in the competition. There are no limitations regarding nationality.
Each team will present its project to a jury at an 8-minute presentation which will take place at the end of the competition. The winning teams will proceed to national and then international finals, where they will present their project to an international jury of experts on technology transfer and business development.
Registration for the hackathon is now open – if you would like to take part, you can register here.
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