Background and justification:

In the context of Earth Observation missions the development of end-to-end simulators (E2ES) has proven to be a useful tool to assess the mission performance and support the consolidation of the technical requirements and conceptual design, as well as to allow end-users assessing the fulfillment of requirements by the mission. For Space Science missions the development of performance simulators is not as extended, and it is usually done externally to the Agency, directly by the scientific community, and mostly for independent instrument chains

The photon enhanced thermionic emitter is a new solar energy harvester suitable for operations at high temperatures. We propose the use of a bio-inspired light-trapping structure to enhance the solar flux collection

Increasing complexity of Software Systems necessitates the focus on system function and behaviour, abstracting from lower-level implementation details of the programming languages. Modelling languages start to find their way into the development process, from requirements specification and system-software co-engineering, up to operations, through development and verification. Use of models increases the level of specification formality and provides a possibility for model simulation and formal analysis to verify certain aspects of the system from the early lifecycle phases.

The use of helicon sources as thrusters for space propulsion has been envisaged as a robust, scalable, reliable and long-life device. The Helicon Plasma Thruster (HPT) is presented as a potentially durable, throttlable and high thrust-to-power ratio device, with intermediate specific impulse and competitive thrust efficiency.

The COBRA (COntactless deBRis Action) concept was studied under ESA contract and then internally by ESA, as part of ESA ́s SysNova technology assessment scheme which uses “technology challenges” and competitions to survey a comparatively large number of alternative solutions. The concept was originally proposed by an industrial consortium led by GMV form Spain with Politecnico di Milano and Thales Alenia Space from Italy. The concept came first in response to a challenge for mission concepts and technologies capable of providing a contactless Earth-bound object orbit modification system.

The activity shall review current estimation techniques employed in space industry and make a analysis in the face of improvement, new demands and functionalities related to space applications in the view of high accuracy control demands ranging from science missions, exploration and vision based control to space transportation guidance navigation and control applications. The study shall execute the robust and high performance estimation and filtering techniques for accurate state reconstruction for hybrid integrated navigation purposes including vision based hybridisation.

Address the open points raised in COrDeT2: i) open points in final report, ii) integrate OBCP building block interface specification from parallel GSTP5 element 2 activities, iii) define unique meta-model of component model and add semantic description, iv) incorporate feedback from OBSW reference architecture consolidation activities (GSTP5 element 2 activities).Harmonize the OBSW reference architecture specification with the outcomes from IMA-SP activity by implementing the recommendations from SISTORA activity.

While most Earth Observation missions based on passive optical methods are intended to measure the light “reflected” by the surface, FLEX uses a completely innovative approach based on the measurement of the light “emitted” as fluorescence by terrestrial vegetation. Such fluorescence emission by vegetation has never been measured from space, which makes FLEX a true Explorer mission providing a type of information never available before.