The In-Orbit Refurbishment and Upgrading Service (IRUS) is a first-of-its-kind refurbishment and upgrading mission concept, proposed by Astroscale and BAE Systems, aligned with ESA’s Circular Economy strategy. The outcome of the systems study was a servicer design, taking elements of Astroscale’s ELSA-M and COSMIC platforms, and a modified, prepared BAE Systems client platform. DHV Technology assessed the potential to refurbish and upgrade solar cells and solar arrays.

The Team evaluated a mission concept to robotically refurbish a GEO satellite by replacing a component of the Electric Propulsion subsystem. The Team performed a case-study to evaluate the suitability of existing propulsion systems for refurbishment. Further, they created a set of circular economy system maps to envisage what the future in-orbit circular economy would look like, and identified a business case that supports refurbishment based on purely commercial value.

In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM) is a revolutionary approach to building and maintaining space infrastructure. By constructing and fabricating components directly in orbit or beyond, ISAM reduces the reliance on Earth-based manufacturing and launch constraints, offering numerous advantages for space exploration, commercial applications, and sustainability. ROBOFAB was proposed as a mission study for redefining how large and complex structures are manufactured and assembled in orbit.

In the frame of the ESA campaign “System Studies for the Circular Economy in Space”, Thales Alenia Space proposed to develop its ideas exploring the ways to enable Design For Circularity initiative focusing on the definition of a mission design and concept of operations of a Recycling Space Plant involving a solar furnace for materials melting. However, beyond the scope of this particular ESA initiative, Thales Alenia Space has been leading many external and internal activities on the way to define and develop a circular space economy.

The original RAMSES mission objective was targeting an arrival at Apophis before the close encounter in April 2029. The consortium proposing RAMSES II concept did baseline the spacecraft architecture on Electric Propulsion, so to provide a different alternative with respect to Hera re-use and decrease the mass at launch (and thus cost). The disadvantage in having electric propulsion is the longer cruise phase required to reach the asteroid, translating into a launch date in 2027.

The Rapid Apophis Mission for Security and Safety (RAMSES) primary mission objective is to characterize and monitor the dynamic behaviour of the asteroid 99942 Apophis before, during, and after its close Earth fly-by in 2029.

The ROARS (Revealing Orbital and Atmospheric Responses to Solar activity) swarm will provide a disruptive step-change to knowledge of our upper atmosphere with direct impacts to fundamental science, space weather forecasting and satellite conjunctions warnings. This report describes a prephase A feasibility study into the mission concept. This study formulates the scientific requirements, investigates the payloads and outlines the developmental pathways to meet the requirements.

• a Receive Telescope with a 80cm aperture mounted on a very precise Mount with arcsecond pointing and tracking accuracy
• a Transmit Laser Package (precise pulsed source capable to operate at 532nm and 1064nm)
• a time-gated photon-counting Detection Package (filters and detectors sensitive at 532nm and 1064nm)
• a precise Control, Timing, Calibration and Processing System as the central "heart" of the LRS

In time scales of minutes the solar subflares and gamma ray bursts, like GRB221009A, can respectively release, small but close and huge but very far away amounts of electromagnetic energy, in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV), X-ray and γ- ray, among other bands. However the availability of conventional astronomical sensors for these bands, for instance in EUV, fundamental to characterize the habitability zone of exoplanets in hosting stars, is presently very limited or just non existing.