Notice

Announcement of opportunity

Published 9 November 2023

This call closes at 4pm on 14 December 2023.

1. Scope of call

The purpose of this AO is to support UK based researchers who have already secured facility access to microgravity and space environments research platforms through the ESA SciSpacE Programmes Research Announcements.

The UK Space Agency is making funding available to support the preparation of experiments. This scheme is open to academics from the UK or overseas, working at UK Research Organisations, who have already been selected by ESA for access to microgravity or space environments facilities.

The UK Space Agency only welcomes proposals for resources and related costs to support experiment preparation and implementation. This could take the form of (but are not limited to):

• support for academics including promising early career researchers, post doctorate research assistants and lead academics
• travel costs to facilitate data collection or experiment implementation
• equipment costs (to support experiment preparation)
• data analysis required to prepare the experiment only

Exploitation of experiment data (analysis, write up, and dissemination) is not within the scope of this call and is generally within the remit of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). We are also unable to provide support for PhD students.

2. Aims and objectives

The aim of the call is to continue to develop the UK’s microgravity community and their research outcomes, and to maximise the return on the UK’s investment in microgravity facilities, through the ESA Exploration programmes.

This call will fund UK based academic researchers who have already secured facility access to microgravity and space environments research platforms through the ESA SciSpace Programme, of which the UK is a member state.

This call aims to provide UK national support to selected experiments in preparation and execution. Prioritisation will be given to experiments scheduled to be executed in 2023 - 2025 (with an understanding that delays can occur).

3. Timetable

Stage	Date and time
AO published	9 November 2023
AO closes	14 December 2023 at 4pm
Panel meeting	January 2024
AO results announced	February 2024
Grants to start	1 April 2024*

*If your start date needs to be before or after 1 April 2024, please discuss with us ahead of submitting your application. We cannot accept start dates later than 1 September 2024.

4. Award value

This funding is from the UK Space Agency, though it is administered through STFC on behalf of the UK Space Agency. Awards will be made in line with standard STFC criteria, in accordance with their financial rules (including the standard FEC application and for the length of the grant – please make sure you and your institution are fully aware of these before application).

The award range of £200,000 specified above is at 80% FEC, ie, £250,000 at 100% FEC, £200,000 funded. Given the award cap, please carefully consider the FTE you require for this project.

Award funding requests should be in line with PDRA/researcher salary costs for standard UKRI grants or justified grant related costs.

Reasonable costs will be permitted, but it should be noted that all costs must be justified and of a reasonable length related to the experiment. The appropriateness and justification of sums requested will form part of the assessment criteria.  When costing your proposal please note that you do not need to factor in price rises (inflation) into this. Please cost the application based on current prices, and if you are successful, ‘indexation’ will be applied to the grant to account for inflation.

The UK Space Agency acknowledges the breadth and scope of microgravity research and wishes to use this allocated funding in the most effective way possible. The UK Space Agency therefore reserves the right to negotiate changes to proposed funding requests on a case-by-case basis.

5. Award length

The maximum funded award length is 32 months (end date December 2027) with an anticipated start date of 1 April 2024. Applications are expected to justify the length of the grant against the experiment timeline and execution.

6. Grant terms and conditions

All awards will be subject to UKRI standard grant terms and conditions, with the addition of the following specific clauses from the UK Space Agency as grant funder:

• the UK Space Agency reserves the right to cancel, re-profile or reduce the award subject to announcements from government Comprehensive Spending Reviews (CSR) or other financial constraints. The current CSR runs to the end of financial year 24/25
• the UK Space Agency also reserves the right to cancel or reduce the award in the event of the project being cancelled or descoped
• the UK Space Agency reserves the right to terminate the grant within a 6-month notice period should it be deemed programmatically or strategically advisable to do so
• the Grant holder agrees that as a condition of receiving any funds they shall provide the UK Space Agency with all information, reports, statistics, study results and data reasonably requested by the UK Space Agency to track and assess progress and performance of the project
• in conjunction with the UK Space Agency, the grant recipient shall monitor the delivery and success of work packages it has allocated funds to throughout the grant period to ensure that the aims and objectives of the work package are being met and that this agreement is being adhered to
• the grant recipient shall not publish any material referring to the funds or this agreement without the prior written agreement of the UK Space Agency
• the grant recipient shall acknowledge the role of the UK Space Agency as grant funder in any materials that refer to the project and in any written or spoken public presentations about the project as it relates to this agreement. Such acknowledgements, where appropriate and with UK Space Agency’s written consent shall include the UK Space Agency’s name and logo, or any future name or logo adopted by the grant funder
• in using the UK Space Agency’s name and logo, the grant recipient shall comply with all reasonable branding guidelines issued by the UK Space Agency from time to time.

Applicants should note that they will be expected to submit their outcomes and outputs through ResearchFish in line with UKRI guidance. Non-compliance will lead to sanctions which could include the immediate freezing of funding and/or non-selection for future funding calls.

If successful, the lead applicant will be asked to submit your JeS form (as outlined below) for formal processing within 2 weeks of being notified of their success. Failure to do so will result in the withdrawal of the initial application and funding.

7. Grant payment

Payments will be made to the lead research organisation quarterly and the first payment will be made once the formal offer letter has been accepted by the research organisation. 

The UK Space Agency reserves the right to adjust the profile of the funding over the length of the grant at their discretion with the support of STFC.

The final payment will be made after the submission of the final reconciliation report at the end of the grant. These processes are administered by STFC, but please note that the UK Space Agency remains the funder.

8. Evaluation Criteria and Assessment of Applications

8.1 Assessment criteria

In considering the proposal, the panel will use the following criteria and scoring mechanism:

Science excellence of the selected experiment (25%)

This score will be entirely based on the scores awarded by ESA through the call that has awarded the facility access. We will not be assessing the science as ESA will have already performed a peer review of the experiment.

Relevance to and priority within the UK Space Agency Exploration programme (10%)

Contributions of the selected experiment and it’s expected outcomes to UK science and exploration activities as related to the National Space Strategy, the global exploration endeavour outlined in the Global Exploration Roadmap, and the UKRI Roadmaps. Applicants will need to specify where they see their project linking to these documents.

Necessity, justification, and timeliness of requested resources (25%)

• criticality of the proposal to the success of the selected experiment
• criticality and appropriateness of the length and timing of the grant as related to the expected experiment timeline and planned execution date (facility access date). Applicants should be aware that priority will be given to those whose projects have been selected by ESA for development and given a facility access date

Value for Money (25%)

• requested costs are appropriate and reasonable
• value of any leveraged funding (including in-kind and financial)

Team membership (10%)

• suitability of the proposed research team to successfully undertake the work covered by this proposal
• appropriateness of team membership and the lead applicants relevant research record

Impact and outreach plan (5%)

• use of the research and activities to inspire others (eg, via social media, events, talks etc.)
• plans to communicate the outcomes of your selected experiment

8.2 Assessment

The grant scheme scope is limited to academics who have already secured facility access through a peer reviewed scheme (ESA research announcement calls). As such no peer review process for the overall experiment will be undertaken. Applications will be reviewed for remit and where appropriate discussed with UKRI to assess remit and priorities and ensure funding is appropriately allocated.

The review panel will be made up of programmatic and technical representatives from the UK Space Agency who will consider all proposals against the evaluation criteria outlined above. The panel will make a final assessment and rank proposals. The panel, in finalising the awards to be made, may take account of the distribution of awards in terms of subject, type of award, and institution. 

9. Application Guidance

Applicants should note the following:

Within the full application, applicants should consider and remember that this application is to the UK Space Agency for funding to support experiment preparation and execution, and this should be focus of the submission. Applicants should ensure that their application makes it clear why the funding is required to prepare and execute the experiment, and why this funding is required at this time (as opposed to a later date). Applicants should note that writing in a clear concise way aids the reviewers in assessing your applications, and that reviewers will not infer information from the application. Please note if your project requires data exploitation post facility access (analysis that is not required for the preparation of the experiment) you will need to specify where you will apply for funding for this analysis, making it clear you understand that it cannot be costed to this grant.

The application will require candidates to fill out a JeS form and an Application Form. Full details on how to apply are in the following section.

For the JeS form:

• please fill in up to and including keywords. Please ensure all UK-based Co-Is who will work on the project and are part of this application for funding are listed in the applicant section of the JeS form. All people who will work on the project under the funding applied for must be detailed in the application
• do not fill out Objectives and Academic Beneficiaries. Instead, please fill them out in the application form provided. You can write ‘See application form’ in each box for Objectives, and Academic Beneficiaries. Any other information provided in these boxes will not be considered
• for the Summary box, please copy and paste the Summary from your Application Form. This is for information storage purposes only and therefore will not be evaluated by the panel, so do not include any additional information that is not on your Application Form
• fill out the Summary of Resources Required of the project, including Other Support, Staff Information, Travel and Subsistence, Other Directly Incurred Costs, Other Directly Allocated Costs, and Project Partners

Please note the Summary provided in the Application Form (and copied into the JeS form) should be suitable for a lay audience as it may be used by the Agency in press releases or Agency news stories.

If you need to reference figures from your ESA application document in this application form, please refer to the page number it is in within your ESA application which will be included in your merged pdf.

Any additional documentation that are included in the pdf submission but are not stated in the ‘How to Apply’ section below, will not be considered. It will not be seen by reviewers or the review panel and will not count towards the proposal. 

If any part of the proposal extends over the stated page or word limit, the additional pages/words will be removed and not considered as part of the proposal.  

If you have any questions about the application, please contact SpaceExploration@ukspaceagency.gov.uk as early in the application process as possible.

The UK Space Agency encourages the development of skills in public communication and will provide funding to support the training of members of the research team.  Provision for training in public communication should be included as other costs under the directly incurred heading.

10. How to apply

Please read all this call guidance carefully.  Contact the UK Space Agency at SpaceExploration@ukspaceagency.gov.uk if you have any questions on any aspect.

NOTE: The UK Space Agency Grant funding will be administered through STFC.

You must send us a single merged pdf of your application. Please include the STFC data management document in your compiled pdf. Please ensure documents in the merged pdf are in the order specified below.

You will need to create, but not submit, an application on the Je-S system through the following instructions:

Please fill in a Je-S form via the Je-S system for a STFC:

1. Standard Proposal as the document type
2. Standard as the scheme
3. Urgency Grants – Open Call as the Call/Type/Mode

Produce a pdf of the completed form. To do this, select: document actions; print document; select print format as ‘pdf’; download the print.

Send this .pdf file, along with the relevant annexes (as listed below) as a single pdf document, with the subject line ‘Autumn SciSpacE Support AO 2023 – [PI SURNAME] Application Submission’ to SpaceExploration@ukspaceagency.gov.uk, to arrive before the closing date.

For full details in using the JeS application system, please refer to  the JeS Handbook.

All annexes MUST be: 

• A4 paper size with minimum of 2 cm margins
• font size of no smaller than 11 pt
• saved and sent as a merged pdf document

Annexes should include:

1. a pdf of the unsubmitted JeS form. Please complete sections as specified in the application guidance above
2. the completed application form (do not exceed the word and page limits specified in the application form, any additional information provided will not be considered)
3. details of current funding (a list of current active grants)
4. the letter from ESA confirming successful award of access to facilities
5. the application submitted to ESA for facility access
6. the ESA peer reviews and related review responses for the facility access application
7. academic CVs of named staff in the proposal (1 side of A4 per named academic). If research staff are yet to be employed, please include a short job specification instead
8. letters of support (if relevant to the success of the proposed experiment)

Please note: it is the responsibility of the proposal principal investigator to clear their submission with the relevant finance and research offices of their institution. Such clearance must be obtained prior to submission. We welcome contact from Institutions research offices and are happy to discuss UK Space Agency calls and funding at any time.

Applications must be received no later than no later than 4pm on 14 December 2023.  Applications received after this will not be considered. 

11. Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting

All grants awarded will require the awardee to report on impacts and outcomes annually through the ResearchFish process as per UKRI grant terms and conditions, both during the grant period and for 5 years afterwards.

In addition, during the grant period, regular progress meetings will be held between the grant holder and the UK Space Agency to monitor and evaluate progress for the length of the grant. 

The UK Space Agency Exploration Team remains available to support project teams at any point and expects the grant holder to make us aware of any delays, barriers, or issues as early as possible.

12. Confidentiality

The information you supply on the application form will be treated in confidence and used by the UK Space Agency in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules. All applications are made in confidence.

The UK Space Agency complies with the GDPR. Please read its Privacy Notice  to find out more.

13. Contact

Any questions concerning this call should have the subject line ‘Autumn SciSpacE Support AO 2023 – applicant query’ and be directed to:

The UK Space Agency Exploration Science Team: SpaceExploration@ukspaceagency.gov.uk