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.

Recent developments in optimisation formulation and software design have allowed multi-criteria optimisation problems to be solved in real-time on typical space-grade processors. An important potential application is slew attitude guidance in the presence of actuator limitations and star tracker or instrument exclusion zones, particularly when slew time is critical.The optimisation problem can be formulated as time, fuel or pointing error (during slew) minimisation with constraints of exclusion zones and actuator authority envelopes.

State-of-the-art planetary science missions have demanding requirements regarding orbit knowledge prediction ; for example, for ExoMars TGO, the prediction requirement is around 100m (cross track) and 10s (along track) 2 weeks in advance during the science phase. EnVision M5 candidate mission has similar requirement with a 300 m cross-track and 10s along-track orbit knowledge prediction up to 2 weeks in advance of a given pass. Aerobraking operations also require accurate orbit determination e.g.

Science missions such as SPICA (with the Safari instrument) and ATHENA (with the X-IFU instrument) require a complex cryogenic chain to ensure thermal bath temperatures in the order of 50 mK at the level of their respective detectors. The last cooling stage in these complex chains includes an Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator (ADR) that takes advantage of the fact that the entropy of paramagnetic materials in a magnetic field is lower than when no field is present.