The increase of space debris means that active space debris removal is becoming more relevant. An active debris removal mission would have a positive effect (or risk reduction) for all satellites in the same orbital band. This leads to a dilemma: each space agency has an incentive to delay its actions and wait for others to respond. We model this scenario as a non-cooperative game between self-interested agents in which the agents are space agencies.

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For the past 20 years ESA has invested in the development of robot systems, in support of human spaceflight and exploration. A robot relies heavily on specific software, called robot controller software (RCS)? or robot operating system, that can provide? tight coordination of perception, reasoning and motion functions. In these years several tens of millions of Euros of RD and project budgets have been spent in developing RCS for various purposes. While this has allowed to progress space robot technology and projects, the approach used in the past is not sustainable.

The GREAT project provides an improved test of Einstein's theory of general telativity by analysing the relativistic gravitational redshift as observed in the clock data from GSAT-0201 and GSAT-0202. These satellites have been injected into highly eccentric orbits following a launch mishap, providing us with the unique chance to perform an important test of fundamental physics.

We report on a new test of the gravitational redshift and thus of local position invariance, an integral part of the Einstein equivalence principle, which is the foundation of general relativity and all metric theories of gravitation. We use data spanning 1008 days from two satellites of Galileo, Europe’s global satellite navigation system (GNSS), which were launched in 2014, but accidentally delivered into elliptic rather than circular orbits. The resulting modulation of the gravitational redshift of the onboard atomic clocks allows the determination of redshift with high accuracy.

The reception performances of the Deep Space Ground Stations is limited by the noise generated in the front end. Any reduction of this noise will allow to increase the data transmitted or to reduce the required mass and power on the spacecraft transmitter.X band is presently used for the telemetry of all deep space missions and will still be the preferred frequency band for future Mars exploration missions. The existing feed and LNA systems have been designed separately. Therefore, the feed system is operated at room temperature while the LNA is operated at 12 K.

The purpose of this study was to define the a communication subsystem architecture (including both ground and space segments, as well as operational methods) that allows robust RF TT&C links during superior solar conjunction phases. The defined architecture shall ensure robust and reliable links in scintillation regimes (i.e. at low SEP angles) where TT&C links are nowadays degraded, leading to occasional link interruptions. Similarly, the defined architecture shall ensure that at even higher scintillation regimes (i.e.

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In this activity, LSI's Airbus, OHB and Thales Alenia Space evaluated CleanSat technologies.