The SAVOIR/SAG identified the modular RTU as a high priority building block. This is one of the key avionics building blocks as the provided functionality is required by the majority of ESA missions.

An EQM has been developed and validated. FR in June/July 2017. EQM Test completed!. The EQM will be used as EM of the Proba3 IEU and it has been used to qualify the design of the IEU of Proba3. EQM campaign concluded and the unit is to be delivered to Proba3.

SAVOIR is an initiative to federate the space avionics community and to work together in order to improve the way that the European Space community builds avionics subsystems. In particular, it is aimed at getting equipment interchangeability. In particular, the group provides a set of standard avionics external and internal interfaces, the definition of building blocks composing the architecture and the functional specification of selected building blocks. One of the building block of the On-Board Reference Architecture is the Solid State Mass Memory.

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.

Performance of European processors for space applications have been increasing over the years, from the ERC32 (25MHz, current missions) to the single-core Leon2/3 (100MHz, upcoming missions) to the next generation processor (multicore, Leon4, future missions). Simulators are needed throughout the software, spacecraft and operations development. Simulator performance needs to keep the pace with the processors. Instruction set simulators for the ERC32 could keep up with real-time simulation of the overall spacecraft.

The Sensor on a chip activity has shown the feasibility of a 75g, 0.2 watt, 30 arcsecond accuracy fully autonomous star tracker with all functionality implemented on a single chip. Several key unknowns however still exist and can only be verified by test.These include: Optical quality achievable, on chip NVM behavious, radiation behaviour of key functions, noise cross talk and power management. Phase 0 of this predevelopment shall concentrate on demonstrating the optical elements including bonding to the silicon substrate and environmental testing.

An ESA study is starting considering the system aspects of the use of the multi-core for our applications, and this study will define the final technical solutions. However, the trend seems to be towards the use of a hypervisor. If this is confirmed, there could be a convergence between the various hypervisors used for partitioning, for security and for multi-core. An environment for hypervisor could therefore be reused, which is the focus of the the proposed activity.

The Integrated Modular Avionics for Space (IMA-SP) concept introduces the role of System Architect to the spacecraft avionics domain. The System Architect has the key responsibility for negotiating the avionics resource allocation with the hosted application suppliers and then performing a system-level verification to ensure that the configured system is capable to host the applications and meet the system requirements. The allocation of the platform resources is an iterative process between the Architect and the application suppliers.

The activity will focus on two specific modes which are under review for general or legal purposes: safe mode and deorbitation mode.In order to maximize commonality and reuse across all future platforms, a generic safe mode appears an interesting option combining magnetic actuators and the propulsion system. It performs similarly on any orbit with any spacecraft, making the most of the advantages of both technologies.

This study proposal addresses the issue of compatibility between the CCSDS SMC and SOIS standards and the ECSS PUS standard. Each of these standards bring an added value and represent a useful reference for the definition and implementation of Monitoring and Control (MC) kernels on ground. However, they are unfortunately defined independently from each other and show significant overlaps (especially between SMC and PUS) and/or contradictions.