Cost effective opportunities for in-orbit demonstration and verification (IOD/IOV) of non-space qualified products and components should be made more easily accessible for customers. This activity is aiming at the development of a customer oriented and cost effective IOD/IOV full service based on a generic NanoSat platform.

Reaction wheels exhibit dominant magnetic field emissions that shall be reduced to allow the reaction wheel use on magnetically susceptible missions without negative impact on scientific objectives. Conventional reaction wheels use brushless DC motors with relatively high magnetic flux densities in large air gaps without any dedicated compensation or 'magnetic balancing' of the motor magnets. The motor external magnetic field together with contributions from further components, (ball bearings), combine to a significant magnetic dipole moment.

Over the last decades, the spaceborne remote sensing community has been focused on the development of imaging radars at RF frequencies such as S-band, L-band, C-band and X-band.

ITU regulations currently permit the use of Ka-band for active spaceborne microwave remote sensing but only few missions are considering applying this frequency band such as the SARAL mission with the ALtiKa instrument (launched 2013).

Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) are of fundamental importance for all ESA missions. Currently, the EOPs are obtained from an external entity the Earth Orientation and Reference Service (IERS). The goal of this activity is the development of ESA capability for the estimation and prediction of Earth Orientation Parameter in order to become independent of external services. Several aspects related to this subject topic need to be investigated and further developed.

The DAEDALUS mission concept aims to explore and characterise the entrance and initial part of lunar lava tubes within a compact, tightly integrated spherical robotic device, with a complementary payload set and autonomous capabilities. The mission concept specifically addresses the identification and characterisation of potential resources for future ESA exploration, the local environment of the Moon's subsurface and its geologic and compositional structure.

 This study investigated the semi-autonomous exploration of a lunar skylight cavity.

Contamination transfer can be influenced by many parameters. Contaminants can be transported by several mechanisms, like outgassing, offgassing, contact, saltation etc. To validate complex models and to quantify effective transfer rates, experimental validation of these models is necessary. For this it is proposed to conduct experiments in a well defined environment with well characterised sample and surface properties, geometries etc. and to devise mitigation strategies by proposing e.g. appropriate engineering measures to limit the contamination transfer.

The study demonstrates that in an emergency situation, with only a very short warning time, the launch of a fast asteroid kinetic deflection mission is feasible (targeting launch-readiness in six months!), given that certain identified pre-requisites have been prepared well in advance. The capabilities and requirements of 'hijacking' and modifying a commercial spacecraft platform in order to perform asteroid kinetic deflection in the shortest possible time were consequently assessed.