The activity focuses on the design of an antenna architecture featuring a single reflecting surface able to generate several different beams. Several feeds can be used to illuminate a shared shaped reflector with locally modified reflection characteristics so has to form separate beams. A dedicated design procedure is required to allow an efficient antenna performance optimisation, including an initial high-level synthesis of the antenna geometry and surface layout, followed by a full-wave optimisation of the reflecting surface. The activity encompasses two steps.

Mercury cadmium telluride has proved itself as the material of choice for infrared detectors in the short and medium wave regions of the spectrum. A wide range of device designs are available with varying parameters and of varying sizes. Space missions are utilising these devices but studies of future requirements have identified the need for larger area, high-resolution, very low noise detector arrays that are currently not available within Europe.

The model based software engineering consists in expressing the software functional requirements with models. In order to get the requirements right as early as possible, system-software co-engineering is necessary, in this case avionics-software co-engineering, where the software functional models are placed consistently into an avionics model.The avionics model represents the physical architecture on which the software will run (deployment view).

Currently employed approaches to FDIR development are poorly phased with regard to the main Software Development activities. They have tendency of starting late, awaiting for the system Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) data. If functional FMECA is sometimes available, its update into the physical FMECA is seldom ready for software development. FDIR definition is not adequately synchronised with the nominal Software System behaviour.

In the framework of the on-board payload data processing reference system, the computing power is de-centralised and distributed in well-defined processing modules where the applications rely on. One of the major benefits of this architecture is to allow the independent technological evolution of the modules without affecting the architecture itself: objective of this activity is therefore to provide the system with new processing models that can be, on one side, painless inserted into the exiting architecture and, on the other side, not specifically designed for a particular need.

BIOMASS, a candidate Earth Explorer mission in Phase A, proposes to measure ice flows over Earth's major ice sheets as a secondary objective in its side-looking observation geometry. On the other hand, P-band ice sounding radar mission concepts have been proposed already for Earth Explorers (e.g. MIMOSA, CARISMA) for obtaining three-dimensional characteristics of ice sheets and underlying bedrock topography.

Typically the human computer interface used on current operational systems consists of a three headed workstation with a keyboard and mouse. During mission critical phases the flight control team and associated support personnel (who are typically distributed throughout different rooms) wear headsets and communicate over voice loops. In the event that an issue arises that requires discussion a meeting is called. This entails that the meeting participants need to leave their workstations to attend the meeting.

Problem – Traditional X-ray windows

A user-friendly tool will be developed using software components from the SPIS (Spacecraft plasma Interaction Software). It will include standard plasma environment, material property lists, and will alllow 3-d geometrical models to be created. The tool will allow for a high degree of automisation of parameters needed to make the code run but which do not reflect real phsical inputs, e.g. mesh resolution, particle weights, time-steps. The code will be extensively verified using available data. User and data interfaces will also be produced.

This activity aims at exploring the benefits which can be extracted from the fibre laser technology by designing and breadboarding a fibre laser system which fulfils the transmitter requirements of a Differential Absorption LIDAR for CO2 and CH4. Such a fibre laser system would offer the modularity for multispectral operation with narrow spectral bandwidth and high spectral stability