A Radio Voltaic Power Supply (RVPSTM) aims to provide electronics self-heating as well as continuous micropower for decades, supporting long duration missions and sensor applications.

Under this activity, a novel Diamond-based RVPS has been modelled, technology matured, and fabricated, incorporating the beta-emitting radioisotope carbon-14 within the device semiconductor lattice.

Communication between crew and ground on future deep space missions will be impacted by communication delay (signal latency), caused by the finite speed of light and radio waves across great distances. The one-way latency caused by the distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 1.3 seconds. The actual latency at lunar distances during the forthcoming Artemis missions is expected to be even higher due to the various signal processing steps associated with the digital communication protocols. Estimates currently vary up to 10 seconds one way.

Optical phase beam steering enables motionless pointing of light. The lack of mechanical moving parts not only reduces overall Mass, Volume, and Power (MVP) to a fraction of conventional solutions, but also reduces the associated risk due to friction fatigue. The applications of this technology both on Earth and in Space are only beginning to be fully understood and realised.

Distributed optical fibre sensors (DOFS) are highly suitable for monitoring temperature, vibration and strain using physical principles such as Raman, Rayleigh and Brillouin backscatter. They convert a standard telecom infrastructure to a sensor network providing thousands of virtual sensors per km using the intrinsic light/glass interaction during propagation.

Project HyperClass aimed at accelerating the technology to process spectra received from single pixel images of space objects and:

i) extract the material composition of the object,

ii) classify the object according to a set of predefined features,

iii) estimate the attitude motion from the spectral lightcurve.

A novel anti-reflection process was demonstrated which improves the quantum efficiency (QE) of a CMOS image sensor, with particular benefits at the ultraviolet (UV) and near infrared (NIR) ends of the electromagnetic spectrum. Also, the dark current and photoresponse non-uniformity (PRNU) were reduced to about 33% and 55%, respectively, of the values for a conventional control sensor. Spatial resolution seemed to be reduced in the NIR, as indicated by MTF measurements, but further investigations are required.

Space Based Solar Power concepts promise the generation of large amounts of renewable power by launching vast Solar Power Satellites (SPS) into space and beaming the power back to rectennas on Earth. Due to diffraction physics, large scale arrays delivering 2GW of power to the ground will be of the order of a kilometre in length and have masses of between 2,000 and 10,000 tonnes.

The ESA Open Space Innovation Platform Campaign for Cognitive Cloud Computing in Space (3CS) called for project proposals for the use of edge and cloud computing technologies in space. D-Orbit created a consortium including UniBap and Trillium to respond to this opportunity with a proposal to engage the cloud computing community to identify and fly applications on the ION SCV-004 mission.

The activity investigated a novel hybrid magnetic shielding system that uses both passive and active cancelation. The design and simulations used, along with the characterisation and measurements taken on the optimised system, are summarised in the executive summary report, and described in more detail in the Final Report. This activity was divided in two main work packages: study of optimisation and magnetic shield prototype.

In this project the authors looked at event-based sensing and processing for space situational awareness (SSA). Many advantages exist with the new paradigm of neuromorphic engineering, the authors investigate whether event-based optical data is suitable for the task and if processing with Spiking Neural Networks (SNN) provides advantages in terms of efficiency and efficacy. With the implementation of a novel heterogeneous LIF SNN, authors claim to surpass the state of the art in event-based SSA with a 15% increase in accuracy.