The use of higher frequencies is becoming necessary for supporting feeder links of High Throughput Telecom Satellites due to the larger bandwidths available. Q and V bands are now being considered as a baseline for next generation systems. The next step will be to look at W band. In order to understand the system sizing, it is necessary to have a good modelling of the propagation channel. So far no measurement campaign has been done, therefore it is needed to start characterizing the channel.

The activity followed the development of an innovative hyperspectral imaging system for remote sensing applications in the thermal infrared. The camera is compact, lightweight and robust. The activity covered the development of the three modules of the imager, namely the spectrometer, the telescope and the detector. The consortium designed and manufactured an innovative spectrometer based on Fourier transform spectroscopy, consisting on calomel birefringent crystals, with working range in the thermal infrared.

Despite different attempts performed in the past two decades, Europe is lacking a competitive product for a large reflector with the requested TRL level to embark on a commercial program. Need is identified to cover antenna applications from 4 up to 18 meter and for frequencies from UHF up to Ka band.. American companies are leaders in this domain and are commercially dominating the worldwide market.

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Diffraction limits the resolution of standard optical microscopes. Breaking the diffraction limit is the motivation behind Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) that includes Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy (SNOM). SPMs create high-resolution maps of the sample’s surface by scanning the sample with nanometric probes. SNOM in particular, can simultaneously provide information on the morphology and on the optical properties of materials by illuminating the sample with a localized field provided by the microscope probe.

The European Charging Station for the Moon (ECSM) is to be integrated within the EL3 Architecture, which provides the function of transportation of ECSM to the lunar surface. The Power Station mission is envisaged as possible EL3 payload and it aims at providing power, at a strategic location on the lunar surface, during lunar day and night to ESA and International partner assets. It is in line with the envisioned international lunar exploration architecture.

New scientific missions require Ka-Band high power sources for the data return. Limitation on maximum antenna size and minimum required data rate can be overcome by increasing the transmitted power. At present, there is no off the shelf TWT(A) in the allocated frequency band (31800-32300 MHz) in Europe with 120W saturated output power. Instead, a 250W TWT in the range 17700 - 20200 MHz is under qualification and the feasibility of 100W TWT in the range 37500 - 42500 MHz has been recently demonstrated by test in a breadboard.

The main goal of MOSAIC project consists in the design of an AESA improving the technical and commercial maturity of the antenna architectures proposed in the ESA invention [1] which describes a design and manufacturing method for large sparse phased arrays for geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellite. Sparse arrays offer power consumption reduction through a not regular lattice, at the cost of increasing the complexity of the beam forming network (BFN) as well as a not complete filling of the available aperture. 

The main idea of MOSAIC consists in adopting: