In recent years the concern about the future exploitation of space has been growing due to the risk that uncontrolled space debris poses to the space environment and therefore to the survivability of operational spacecraft. Two main regions of concern exist, GEO, where most of the commercial telecommunications satellites orbit, and LEO, where many scientific missions observing the Earth fly. Of special concern is the sun synchronous orbit, a natural resource of special interest for Earth sciences.

The XNAV concept has been analysed in detail. The performances obtained from simulations have been validated successfully using real data from XMM-Newton space telescope.
The performances obtained using real data are not in line with the XNAV performances (100 m for the Crab pulsar) due to limitations in the XMM-Newton instrument operations. We have been forced to use a source much fainter than the Crab pulsar and surrounded by a background much stronger than expected.

BEAST aims to modify the orbital period of the small secondary object of a binary asteroid by kinetic impact. BEAST analyses a commercial LEO platform accommodating as payload the impactor and GNC system with total mission cost below 150 M€.
The objective of the Cobra mission is to use a conventional chemical thruster to modify the orbit of a man-made object through plume impingement. The proposed concept uses a standard satellite platform with a modified payload to suit mission needs.

The RC-SIM project is enclosed in the initiative of using more extensively the capability of the radio communication signals (telemetry and datalinks) of interplanetary probes for remote sensing the structure of planets and moons. In more detail, the objectives of this study are:

-Investigate the physical parameters that can be obtained from the use, as a remote sensing instrument, of the radio communication systems on-board interplanetary probes.