Due to the large increase in manufacturing volume of space systems components, coming e.g. from the Mega Constellations and Cubesats domains, the standardisation of flight hardware is progressing faster than ever.

Efforts for anomaly root cause analysis (e.g. GAIA) show the urgent need of using discipline models with flight data for diagnostic purposes. Acquiring more feedback from (also nominal) flight operations is also urgent to improve spacecraft related processes of engineering, analysis and verification. A spacecraft is equipped with several monitoring sensors that measure different attributes of the spacecraft. This results in a huge raw stream of data that has to be analysed to produce information about spacecraft behaviour and health status.

Spacecraft potentials in the outer Earth magnetosphere may reach a few tens of volts positive and therefore severely perturb plasma particle and electric field measurements. Therefore, magnetospheric missions from ESA such as Cluster, but also from international partners such as Double Stars and MMS have relied on an ion emitting instrument, ASPOC (Active Spacecraft Potential Control), developed by IWF in Austria for lowering the positive potential down to a few Volts positive.

A key objective of the Model-Based for System Engineering (MBSE) roadmap is to use MBSE to improve reviews conducted within the Agency. To date, the Agency has some limited experience with this; nonetheless, a standardised process has not yet been developed. In addition, the current tools and processes do not encourage easy interaction with models for users who are not experienced modellers. Digital modelling literacy is low across the wider Agency, and will likely remain so in the coming years.

The activity shall develop three prototypes of the exoskeleton system, one to be qualified for usage inside the International Space Station and one to be up-loaded as flight model to the international space station. The third model will be a ground reference model. The test campaign of the system can be undertaken as an agency furnished item. The activity shall develop a full mechatronic system, including all material to package and transport the system to orbit, control electronics and computers.

The current state of the art for bi-propellant propulsion systems employed by telecom spacecraft is to have a gas regulated system to maintain the propellant feed pressure in the propellant tanks for the Apogee engine burn. For on-station the pressure in the propellant tank is allowed to decay over life (aka blowdown) and thus the thruster propellant inlet pressure (and hence thruster performance) decays over time. Recently a number of different pump concepts have been proposed to improve the performance of propulsion launcher systems.

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.