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.

Background and justification:
•Conformal antennas which can be integrated in the avionics of a launcher are a key point for telemetry, safety and GNSS data in launcher applications. Moreover, they minimize aerodynamic drag by being mounted on or embedded in the curved surface of high-performanceaircraft. COALA project combines antennas with low aerodynamic drag with superior RF performance to provide optimal platform performance. Moreover, the project reduces the European dependency to foreign solutions.

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.

Achievements and status: 
Commercial S band diplexer has been tested with results close to expectations
Upgraded diplexer variant has been designed, manufactured and tested
The test showed no power improvement compared to standard variant 
 

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 work carried out reports on a new machine learning-based software prototype for designing and optimising phased array antennas. The prototype can rapidly and accurately compute excitation coefficients for large-scale antenna arrays across diverse configurations and far-field requirements. The prototype relies on tailored neural networks integrating structural physics and domain knowledge using an encoder-decoder structure.