September 5 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian companies, including startups, can apply for funding of between 70,000 levs and 800,000 levs ($405,878/409,033 euro) to support the development of innovative space technologies, the Bulgarian Ministry of Innovation and Growth said.
The funding is to be awarded under a tender procedure of the European Space Agency (ESA) for Bulgaria, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. The total budget of the programme is 2.2 million levs.
Applications can be submitted to the ESA until September 22.
The tender is open to Bulgarian micro, small and medium enterprises as well as research organisations. The programme covers projects related to the aviation segment, space applications, equipment and products that could be used in the ESA missions as well as market research, educational activities and research and development activities.
In the past years, 39 Bulgarian space technology projects worth a total of 13 million levs have been approved under seven tender procedures. The projects include the development of an instrument to measure the radiation in orbit around Mars, a space greenhouse for growing plants, monitoring of agricultural and forest areas from space as well as observation of large hydropower reservoirs, among others.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)