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ICE Cubes Service - International Commercial Experiment Cubes Service

Objective

The International Commercial Experiment Cubes Service (ICE Cubes) will provide rapid, simplified, low cost access to the International Space Station, creating the opportunity to maximise the use of the remaining lifetime of the ISS. The initial service will enable any organisation, public or private entity or individual, such as universities, academic programmes and pharmaceutical companies/research centres or private persons to perform experiments on the ISS. Furthermore the ICE Cubes service will develop special miniaturised capabilities for use in space that do not exist today, in response to market needs.
Space Applications’ knowledge gained from working on a daily basis with ESA to establish scientists needs, to train astronauts, and to develop and operate payloads on the ISS will be used to realise this commercial opportunity.
ICE Cubes fully supports the process of experiment development and takes care of the flight acceptance, launch manifest and operation of the customers’ experiments. The ICE Cubes service includes:
• As much or as little customer support as needed, throughout the process of experiment development, flight acceptance, launch and operation of the experiments;
• The ICE Cubes on-orbit facility consisting of (1) a Framework facility for ‘plug-and-play’ modular Experiment Cubes and (2) the PharmaLab, a novel multi-cube facility for pharmaceutical research;
• An out of the box installable ground monitoring and control software to access experiments;
• Market driven development of additional added value miniaturised equipment and facilities.
This project will result in the set up and operation of the ICE Cube service, including the design and development of the ICE Cubes system, the launch of the Framework facility, the PharmaLab facility and at least one Experiment Cube developed by a university and their on-orbit and on-ground operation, as well as the initiation of an entrepreneurial ecology of supporting technology development companies.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

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Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-SMEInst-2014-2015

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Coordinator

SPACE APPLICATIONS SERVICES NV
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 337 125,00
Address
LEUVENSESTEENWEG 325
1932 Zaventem
Belgium

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Halle-Vilvoorde
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 3 338 750,00
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