Spacecraft electrostatic charging in hot plasma environments leads to the risk of damaging electrostatic discharges and is linked to many serious incidents of anomalies and damage to spacecraft electronics. In principle, the charge can be removed by active emitters (guns) but this adds to the system complexity and cost. A GSP study used theory and simulation to explore the possibility of a passive system in which naturally occurring potential differences on the spacecraft can be used to drive an electron emitter, which safely lowers the spacecraft potential.

Space mixed-signal radiation tolerant front-end performance for sensor and control for instrumentation and AOCS are limited by the supply of disparate analogue and mixed-signal components.

The d.deorbit CDF study identified the robotic gripper mechanism as a key area of technology development. The gripper, which is attached to the tip of the robotic arm, plays a important role in the satellite capture operation as it provides the mechanical and structural interface between the servicer/chaser vehicle and the target satellite during the critical capture and stabilisation operations. Due to the potentially unknown state of the target satellite, the capture operation must be able to handle both cooperative satellites (i.e.

Predictive capability of thermo-elastic analyses for distortion (stability) and strength is not satisfactory, as shown by the recent examples of GAIA, Pleiades, Herschel, Planck, but also with the ongoing work for Bepi Colombo and Solar Orbiter, while the requirements for stability keep getting more challenging. The analytical models are usually not correlated by tests on ground wrt to thermo-elastic predictive capability, hence the performance verification is limited to analyses and unacceptable/unquantified levels of uncertainty remain.

The definition of the On-board Software Reference Architecture (OSRA) has led to the definition of a main model (the architecture itself, defined in OSRA), supported by other models focusing on specific aspects such as real-time, transaction, bus exchange, etc. or making the link with system such as the Spacecraft Data Base. The space system primes and space software providers have been starting to use various modelling languages (UML or DSLs) and various tools to support their in-house tailored software engineering processes.

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 is supposed to provide a wide-spread analysis not only limited to POD concepts, but also investigating the impact of the SSV extension on operational concepts for space users, GNSS software design, and ground operations.

The activity aims to develop techniques (e.g. high sensitivity algorithms, data wipe off for Galileo, optimal data plus pilot combinations etc.) in order to enhance the capability of mass market receivers taking into account their typical resources constraints (limited power, memory, open loop platform etc...). The activity shall investigate the application of these techniques for phase and code tracking down to the detailed design of the techniques for different type of usage and in different type of environment.