Access to the subsurface of planetary bodies, is still a young research field with only limited experiences demonstrated by the space community. Underground access will enable scientific understanding of the planetary bodies and can potentially be essential for habitability. In this context, it is vital to provide communication links with above-ground stations or relay satellites. A wireless communication link appears to be the most attractive solution because of its higher flexibility compared to wired networks.

The concluded TRP Advanced large FOV UV/VIS/NIR/SWIR spectrometers has identified high efficiency reflective concave gratings working over a large band as a key technology to enable the manufacturing of instruments that encompass the performances of OLCI in terms of optical quality, spatial resolution and compactness. The current activity aims at the design, manufacturing and testing of a reflective grating for a compact imaging spectrometer with very large FOV and working from the UV to the NIR spectrum .

An investigation shall be done of the feasibility of a fractionated (multi-static) surface/sub-surface sounder configuration that fulfils the needs of the key application of interest i.e. remote sensing of the planets or moons of planets. This type of configuration allows to increase the SNR (having more than one receiver) and together with the use of advanced radar processing strategies enables the clutter removal or feature extraction.

Small satellites have seen a significant growth over the past decade and have emerged as a viable complement to traditional large satellite solutions for many applications. This growth is mainly justified by their short development time and low cost.

After Beagle 2 failure, one of the recommendations from the Commission of Inquiry concluded that future planetary entry missions should include a minimum telemetry of critical performance measurements and spacecraft health status during mission critical phases such as entry and descent. In case a relay satellite would be available, the data would be transferred to it, which will act as an Orbiter.

The "Sea surface Kinematics Multiscale monitoring" (SKIM) concept, interferometry and next generation Sentinel altimeter missions (S3 topo NG) rely on elaborate on-board data processing. During the SKIM phase A/B1 study, a pre-development activity addressing the on-board processing needs has been started, consisting in two parts. In the first part, the algorithms have been developed, implemented and tested in quantified C-code. The missing step, which was not executed as SKIM was not selected, is to implement and test the algorithms in hardware.

The interest of having in the near future an available Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) service supporting future missions to and at the Moon is currently supported by both institutional and commercial initiatives. On the commercial side, multiple companies are developing business solutions targeting the Moon and several major European companies are proposing to team up to build a communications network on the Moon compatible to terrestrial standards. In parallel, NASA has recently announced its plans to a ?Return to the moon?