SGAC – OHB SE Competition 2025 Scholarships to attend the Space Generation Congress and the International Astronautical Congress in Australia

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Closing Date: 15 May 2025

SGAC – OHB SE Competition 2025 Scholarships to attend the Space Generation Congress and the International Astronautical Congress in Australia

SGAC – OHB SE Competition 2025 Scholarships

OHB SE, one of Europe’s prominent satellite developers, and SGAC are collaborating to support 2 students or young professionals to attend the 23nd Space Generation Congress (SGC) and the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) on 25th to 27th September and 29th September to 3rd October, 2025 respectively in Sydney, Australia.

Description

Four years after NASA announced the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program to replace the International Space Station (ISS) a field of competitors has consolidated with different plans, business models and timelines. The successful commercialization of space will be within reach, if new space stations manage to profit from new technologies, different orbits, satellite constellations and new means of transporting crew and cargo.

Space agencies and key industry players drive this effort for different reasons, to avoid a gap in LEO and to not cede the domain to others (e.g., China), but also since in-space research and development has proven valuable and space agencies are willing to pay for access.

This presents a major chance for new and established players in the space field alike to benefit through new technology innovation, new market creation, and high level of public spending. But changes don’t come without challenges, and it is likely that proven development and operation processes will need to be more streamlined and trimmed for efficiency.

Award

The author(s) of the winning essays will receive an award in order to attend the following events:

23nd Space Generation Congress (SGC): 25th to 27th September 2025
76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC): 29th September to 3rd October 2025

The award will include provisions for travel, accommodation, and registration for SGC and IAC. The amount for each of the two partial scholarships is € 2000. The winners will sit with the OHB team at the SGC gala dinner.

Eligibility

The competition is open to all registered SGAC members between the ages of 18 to 35 inclusive (up to the day of their 36th birthday) on 3rd October 2025
The competition is open to students or young professionals.
Competition organizers and judges are not eligible for this award.

Submission

The paper is due as an unlocked PDF document under 5 MB. It shall be submitted via the Scholarship Submission Form. You will need to be logged in as an SGAC member to access the submission page.
The paper should be limited to 1000 words maximum. If selected as winner, OHB will then ask you for the full elaboration of your work.
The language of all submissions shall be English.
The submission shall include original content and research. Work that has already been presented at a past conference or previously submitted to this competition is not eligible.
The paper should conform to all the rules for the submission to the IAC (including font, font size, page margin, pictures, etc..) with exception to length. The length is limited to 1000 words. An abstract submission and/or acceptance to the IAC is not required, this is a separate paper competition.
All team submissions must be done by one point of contact, main author of the paper and only person that will be recognised as the winner and reimbursed for the competition.
The winners of the competition will be required to deliver to OHB a presentation about their paper.
All submissions shall be made by the 15th May 2025, 23:59 GMT. Any submissions after the deadlines will not be considered.
In case of lack of quality of submissions, SGAC has the right to extend and or cancel the competition.

Responsibilities of the Winners

The winning authors shall:

Attend the entire SGC 2025.
Attend the entire IAC 2025.
Support the running of SGC and the SGAC booth at IAC 2025. These tasks offer great opportunities such as being the front face of SGAC at the SGAC booth and meeting interesting people.
Meet with the competition supporters during IAC 2025, if a meeting is agreed.
Submit a short video (1 minute) describing their experience at SGC and IAC for inclusion on the SGAC website, newsletter or social media and that of our partner. The report and video shall describe the experience of the winner at the events. For example, speakers that were particularly interesting, group discussions that stood out or other event highlights.

All responsibilities shall be fulfilled and reports etc. submitted no later than 4th November 2025. In case the scholarship awardees do not complete the scholarship requirements on time, the scholarship funds will be transferred to SGAC general budget to continue supporting the mission and work of SGAC.

Evaluation

Evaluators will include members of the SGAC Scholarships team and OHB SE employees. The evaluation will be made based on a point system taking following criteria and their weights into consideration: