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Call / details
Critical Facilities Serving Space EEE components for EU non-dependence – High and Very High Energy Irradiation Test Facility Market Deployment HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03-85
ID 158 2026-03-10 / 2026-09-03
Description
Programme
Horizon Europe (HORIZON)
Call SPACE (HORIZON-CL4-2026-03)
Type of action HORIZON-IA HORIZON Innovation Actions
Topic description
Expected Outcome:
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Reinforcing EU strategic autonomy by reducing non-EU dependencies on critical space EEE components across their entire supply chain, including radiation testing facilities;
- Providing unrestricted access to critical space EEE components and testing facilities relevant for EU space missions (Galileo, EGNOS, Copernicus, IRIS2 and EU pilot missions on In-Orbit Space Operations and Quantum Gravimetry);
- Developing or regaining capacity to operate independently in space by developing resilient space EEE components and testing facilities supply chains, relying on EU supply chains and/or trustable and reliable supply chains not affected by non-EU export restrictions;
- Enhancing competitiveness by developing products and capabilities reaching equivalent or superior performance level than those from outside the EU and compete at worldwide level.
Scope:
Unrestricted access to state-of-art space EEE components and related technologies is a pre-requisite for the EU space industry responding to EU space missions. However, especially for some families of components, the available solutions in EU do not meet the current high-performance space requirements. This is also the case for testing facilities, especially high and very high energy testing facilities which are not available in EU. Currently, alternative irradiation testing facilities located outside EU, are either overbooked or often prioritized under the light on national security limiting their use by EU space stakeholder or severely delaying their access. This represents a challenge in terms of reliable and trustable supply chains for the implementation of EU space missions.
Within the frame of this topic, it is expected to finance and implement a development project aiming at maturing the development of a dedicated irradiation test facility open to EU space stakeholders with focus on testing EEE components for space applications and final goal of lowering the dependency from outside EU. This will be done by moving from small scale prototype irradiation testing demonstrations to a fully-fledged irradiation test facility with sufficient beam time spread across the entire year supporting EU strategic autonomy in the space sector. The selection of the supply chains shall reflect this objective. Therefore, the supply chain shall preferably be built fully based in EU and when this can only be achieved partially, services procured from outside EU shall nevertheless ensure that the overall supply chain will remain trustable, not subject to national prioritization and not affected by non-EU export control. The latest scenario is subject to the approval of the granting authority (i.e. DG-DEFIS and HaDEA).
The focused space development relevant for this topic has been identified based on needs related to strategic institutional space programs, inputs from European stakeholders and the EU Observatory of Critical Technologies: High and Very High Energy (70 MeV/n up to 1GeV/n) Irradiation Test Facility Deployment. Further details will be provided at the latest at the opening of the Call, in a Guidance document published on the Funding & Tenders Portal.
To achieve the non-dependence objective, applicants are expected to include a dedicated proposal’s paragraph covering:
- The description of the technology that will be used for providing the irradiation beam and high-level breakdown of the supply chain relevant for the whole test facility. Applicants should demonstrate that the supply chain and final test facility are free of any legal export restrictions or limitations, such as those established in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or equivalent instruments applicable in other non-EU jurisdictions. Applicants shall also report, in a dedicated subsection, if and which part of the supply chain is affected by non-EU export controls such as the Export Administration regulation (EAR) i.e. EAR99.
The testing facility shall be open and accessible toward EU and non-EU space stakeholders nevertheless in case the amount of beam time requested will be exceeding the beam time available, the allocation shall be prioritizing EU based stakeholders. Requests coming from non-EU shall be analysed on an ad-hoc basis, considering also the remaining available beam time. This prioritization scheme shall be reflected in the proposal. The test facility as well as related control software and booking platform/website toward the public should clearly report the EU flag.
Budget: 3 920 000 EUR
Indicative number of grants: 1
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