• • Ship Detection: Reduce the processing time; ;

A number of upcoming or planned Earth Observation missions (e.g. Sentinel 3, MTG, Post-Metop, Premier etc.) require cryogenic cooling between 80 and 50K. To obtain this level of temperature, it is now common to use long life mechanical coolers (e.g. Stirling Coolers for Sentinel 3 and Pulse Tube cooler for MTG) which are most of the time redundant. Operational missions requiring to be Single Point Failure tolerant, the cryogenic system has to be sized taking into account a OFF redundant cooler. This introduces a large parasitic heat load in the order of the actual user load.

The first steps have been taken to establish a non-explosive, harmless Indium-based 100W electric propulsion system for small and medium satellites. The activity successfully developed a breadboard that included all necessary functions for controlling a micro thruster, including temperature sensing and control, generation of the high voltage supplies for the ion emitter and extractor as well as heating and bias voltage supply for the charge balancing.

Since 2003 ESA has promoted studies in order to establish scientific requirements, identify the most appropriate measurement techniques, start the associated technology developments, and define the system scenarios for a Next-Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM). Such a mission will make use of the Low-Low Satellite-to-Satellite Tracking (LL-SST) technique to monitor the temporal variations of the Earth gravity field over a long time span but with much higher spatial resolution and with improved temporal resolution.