Although Single Event Effects (SEE) have been known for many years to be a major source of anomalies in spacecraft, problems are multiplying because of technology evolution and the inability of analysis techniques to keep pace. New mechanisms in SEE generation are emerging, and "classical" analysis algorithms and software (such as CREME-96) are becoming rapidly outdated due to their major simplifications in the physics and in the treatment of the sensitive "bit" geometry.

In recent years, the traditional MCT (Mercury Cadmium Telluride) technology for near-infrared (NIR) sensing has been developed further to manufacture APD (Avalanche Photo-Diode) arrays, which enables sub-electron readout noise measurements. This technology is now routinely used for wave-front sensing on ground-based telescopes using small format devices. Further effort to increase the size of NIR APD sensors as well as improving the MCT material properties (e.g. lower dark current) is needed such that they can be used for future ground and space-based scientific instrumentation.

Electroless plating technique has been extensively used for many decades not only in the space domain, but also in other high end industrial sectors. The existing electroless techniques works very well in case of regular and flat geometries but in case of complex shapes the thickness uniformity of the deposition layer can be an issue. The current research activities related to this topic are mainly focused on the optimization of the electronic bath using ionic liquid.

An Operations Ground Segment consists of a complex system of systems, each of which is a source of high-throughput events e.g. telemetry, Out-Of-Limits, operating/data/network system logs. Today the majority of MC systems support a particular subsystem, have limited processing / analysis capabilities (e.g. limit checking, synthetic parameters, filters) and support only stateless operations.

Several SAR future Earth Observation missions requires large reflector antennas generating highly directive overlapped beams. This has been done so far with high power waveguide Beam Forming Networks including ferrite switches as implemented for Core H2O pre-developments. In this activity, it is proposed to investigate reflector antennas fed by overlapped subarrays. This represents an extremely promising concept for on-board SAR instruments.

Present ESA Deep Space Stations are equipped with a 20 kW X-Band High Power Amplifier (HPA).