Test data on material properties and material performance under cryogenic conditions are increasingly required or current and future research, development and application activities (e.g. launcher propulsion systems). The very limited available data base does currently not cover new advanced metallic alloys, composite materials or materials manufactured with new processes e.g. Additive Manufacturing as selected and required for the next generation launcher and spacecraft missions.

When setting up a lunar station, technologies for the use of locally available materials are crucial. Such technologies drastically reduce the need for transportation from Earth. This project idea aims to provide proof of a key technology, namely Mobile – Selective Laser Melting (M-SLM) for building large structures on the Moon. A mobile high power laser beam is directed on lunar regolith leading to its melting and after cooling to solid structures. In an independent study, we designed the MOONRISE payload up to an engineering model (EM).

As humans travel further into the Solar System for longer periods of time, many challenges must be solved. One challenge is ensuring an adequate food supply for the crew. Currently all of the food that is consumed by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) is prepackaged on Earth and transported to the ISS. This approach requires a significant investment of mass and the long-term stability of nutrients in the stored food is unclear. Especially the impact of radiation outside of low-Earth orbit may have a negative impact on the stored food.

Thermo-optical coatings are used to control and to protect sensitive surfaces of satellites and spacecrafts. The paints are mostly either black (high alpha) and conducting or they are white (low alpha) and non-conducting. Most paint also do not originate from Europe. COIN COAT is an acronym for COnducting Inert Non-hazardous COATings and wants to overcome the statement that a conducting paint needs to be black.

The Data Compression as a Service (DCaaS) study aimed to bring the benefits of data compression to the experimenters on ESA's OPS-SAT platform. It focused on using the POCKET+ algorithm for the compression of housekeeping telemetry data. The project contained a space component, which performed the compression of provided user data, and a ground component, for the decompression of transmitted user data. Three use cases were selected within the scope of the project: file-to-file, packet-to-packet, and stream-to-stream lossless data transfers.

Lunar regolith can be sintered/melted by intensive solar or laser radiation to dense and rigid structures. For reaching the required energy densities, sunlight can be focused by means of mirrors or lenses. In the present study, solar radiation is simulated by a CO2 laser system, providing a maximum power output of 12 kW cw. The laser has been used to generate large laser spots of 50 mm respectively 100 mm. In both cases a parallel laser beam with the same diameter of the laser spot has been generated to make the spot diameter independent of the distance to the target powder.

The continuously increasing amount of long-term and of historic data in EO facilities in the form of online datasets and archives makes it necessary to address technologies for the long-term management of these data sets, including their consolidation, preservation, and continuation across multiple missions. The management of long EO data time series of continuing or historic missions, with more than 20 years of data available already today, requires technical solutions and technologies which differ considerably from the ones exploited by existing systems.