The electric solar wind sail (E-sail) propulsion system, because it does not run out of propellant, can enable multi-target missions that can flyby or rendezvous with a larger number of asteroids or other celestial objects.

Currently, the Loop heat pipe evaporators are mainly cylindrical in order to cope with the internal working pressure. All electronic units have a flat thermal interface. This means that an LHP requires an thermal interface adaptor from a rectangular flat surface to a cylindrical shape (e.g. saddle). Therefore, these additional thermal interfaces and the small contact area decrease the overall performance of the Loop heat pipe.

The ISS Exploration Capabilities Study (IECS) is a joint study undertaken by ESA in cooperation with the 4 other ISS partners: NASA, JAXA, Rosscosmos, and CSA. In the IECS study, the human exploration programme for the period 2021-2030 is addressed. In this study it is proposed that in the first half of the 2020(s), a joint programme could start by building a Cis-Lunar Transport Habitat (CTH) vehicle. The CTH will be placed on a NRO orbit around the Moon. Safety of underlying trajectories is critical for rendezvous to human-tended infrastructure.

As pointed out during the round table on Microprocessors for Space Applications (ADCSS09) the need for a reduced cost and highly integrated microcontroller for low-end space applications is strong. The obsolescence of the 80c51 is creating a hole not filled by the available high-end microcontrollers like the AT7913E.This type of applications implies a reduced component price, a small and easy to be assembled low pin-count package (not BGA) and (monolithic) integration of essential system components (e.g.

This activity aims to understand better the complete environmental impacts of space missions, filling the knowledge gaps from previous studies. This in turn allows identification of areas where impacts are concentrated (hotspots) in order to focus future attention for making improvements.

Flash FPGAs combine the reprogrammability and flexibility of SRAM-based FPGAS, with immunity to configuration upsets, low static power and a non-volatile configuration, which are characteristics more common to antifuse-based FPGAs. The latest developments in Flash-based FPGAs, e.g. the 4th generation Microsemi Flash FPGAs (RTG4), offer a high number of high-performance programmable logic resources, large and fast on-board memories, and high performance I/O - SERDES, LVDS, DDR, etc.

In 2009, the Nanosat study recommended a high degree of integration between data handling, AOCS and power distribution. Meanwhile, industry has come with innovate solutions where AOCS sensors are miniaturised and can be progressively introduced fully or partially in the central processor, typically coarse gyros, GNSS receivers or the processing part of the Star Trackers, leaving only optical heads or GNSS antennas to be accommodated as external units.

In an era of high resolution gravity field modelling the dominant error sources in spacecraft orbit determination are non-conservative spacecraft surface forces, such as: Solar Radiation Pressure, antenna thrust, Earth' albedo, thermal re-radiation, etc. The conventional approach to these problems is to use an empirical blind model which absorb all the forces but this approach introduces systematic errors and limit the prediction of the orbit. In the last years several wind-box model have appeared, developed based in GPS and Glonass official information, to overcome this limitation.

In an era of high resolution gravity field modelling the dominant error sources in spacecraft orbit determination are non-conservative spacecraft surface forces, such as: Solar Radiation Pressure, antenna thrust, Earth' albedo, thermal re-radiation, etc. The conventional approach to these problems is to use an empirical blind model which absorb all the forces but this approach introduces systematic errors and limit the prediction of the orbit. In the last years several wind-box model have appeared, developed based in GPS and Glonass official information, to overcome this limitation.

SpaceWire links (based on LVDS for the physical layer) are used extensively on-board Earth Observation, Science and Exploration spacecraft, in particular to transmit science data. MTG and Plato are typical examples out of many. The trend is to use higher data rates over longer cable lengths.