In recent years the concern about the future exploitation of space has been growing due to the risk that uncontrolled space debris poses to the space environment and therefore to the survivability of operational spacecraft. Two main regions of concern exist, GEO, where most of the commercial telecommunications satellites orbit, and LEO, where many scientific missions observing the Earth fly. Of special concern is the sun synchronous orbit, a natural resource of special interest for Earth sciences.

Chlorophyll fluorescence (CF) is a natural spectral emission resulting from the interaction of plant chlorophyll pigment with visible light (typically 400‐700 nm). In photosynthesizing tissues, red and far‐red light can be emitted from any chlorophyll‐containing plant tissues which are exposed to light: primarily foliage, but also green stems, green exposed roots, floral structures, many fruits, and green seeds.

The model based software engineering consists in expressing the software functional requirements with models. In order to get the requirements right as early as possible, system-software co-engineering is necessary, in this case avionics-software co-engineering, where the software functional models are placed consistently into an avionics model.The avionics model represents the physical architecture on which the software will run (deployment view).

KABOOM
We study a low-cost interplanetary mission to demonstrate the capability of artificially modifying the orbit of a small (250 ton) binary asteroid body. The targeting spacecraft survives the slow (~1 m/s) impact to carry out the orbit modification measurement afterwards.
Methodology:

The XNAV concept has been analysed in detail. The performances obtained from simulations have been validated successfully using real data from XMM-Newton space telescope.
The performances obtained using real data are not in line with the XNAV performances (100 m for the Crab pulsar) due to limitations in the XMM-Newton instrument operations. We have been forced to use a source much fainter than the Crab pulsar and surrounded by a background much stronger than expected.

BEAST aims to modify the orbital period of the small secondary object of a binary asteroid by kinetic impact. BEAST analyses a commercial LEO platform accommodating as payload the impactor and GNC system with total mission cost below 150 M€.
The objective of the Cobra mission is to use a conventional chemical thruster to modify the orbit of a man-made object through plume impingement. The proposed concept uses a standard satellite platform with a modified payload to suit mission needs.