The architecture of an SPS system requires that the SPS maintain constant visibility to both the Sun and the ground station. This immediately implies a so-called Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO), which is also called a Geostationary Orbit; or a near-GEO Geosynchronous Orbit (GSO). These are substantially the same orbits that are used for existing communications satellites.

New scientific missions require Ka-Band high power sources for the data return. Limitation on maximum antenna size and minimum required data rate can be overcome by increasing the transmitted power. At present, there is no off the shelf TWT(A) in the allocated frequency band (31800-32300 MHz) in Europe with 120W saturated output power. Instead, a 250W TWT in the range 17700 - 20200 MHz is under qualification and the feasibility of 100W TWT in the range 37500 - 42500 MHz has been recently demonstrated by test in a breadboard.

Location based services (LBS) are in increase with high demand for better and better location accuracy.

The project called Peripheral and Redundancy Switch Controller is based on the proposal made by Agile Systems Engineering to develop, test and integrate a switch between two on-board-computers (OBCs) that would be connected to

Smallsat DTN is an OPS-SAT experiment awarded funding trough ESA’s OSIP, OPS-SAT campaign. The aim of the project is to investigate the benefits of CFDP and Bundle Protocol for satellite operations and their possible applications in the optical communications links, of the future ESA mission of OPS-SAT 2. The Flight Campaign of the project completed in a three-day span, successfully demonstrating the implementation of a LEO DTN network, spacecraft remote control and configuration over Bundle Protocol and CFDP imagery data distribution over multiple passes from the ground segment.