The Low-Cost Solar Panel Assembly GSTP Project has the high-level objective of increasing the European TRL level for innovative, high power to volume ratio, versatile, low-cost solar arrays, in this way contributing to cover the gap in this area with US manufacturers and to improve Europe global competitiveness. This new generation of solar power systems are also key to electrical-propelled missions in the whole range of orbits of interest

State-of-the-art planetary science missions have demanding requirements regarding orbit knowledge prediction ; for example, for ExoMars TGO, the prediction requirement is around 100m (cross track) and 10s (along track) 2 weeks in advance during the science phase. EnVision M5 candidate mission has similar requirement with a 300 m cross-track and 10s along-track orbit knowledge prediction up to 2 weeks in advance of a given pass. Aerobraking operations also require accurate orbit determination e.g.

As new software tools are developed for Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) applications, parallel improvements are needed for Concurrent Engineering teams, since this can be one of the first steps for a model-based approach to build-up on throughout the continuation of the project. One of the main constraints during Concurrent Design (CD) studies is the capability of generating and evaluating a large amount of possible mission architectures without the implication of additional experts or time allocation.

COMPASS is a tool for model-based system/software co-engineering developed in a series of ESA studies (2008–2016). It is based on a dialect of AADL and it offers a complete set of functionalities for formal verification, including requirements specification and analysis, contract-based design and verification, functional verification, fault specification, fault injection and RAMS analyses, including Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Diagnosability Analysis, Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery Analysis (FDIR).

The project, part of the ESA Discovery Campaign on Remote Sensing of Plastic Marine Litter, developed a method to estimate floating macroplastic accumulation and transport rates in rivers using remote sensing. It combined the detection of floating water hyacinths using Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 with in-situ estimates of macroplastic densities carried by this invasive aquatic weed. Water hyacinths typically form large patches of several meters of width and length, and can thus be detected from space.

Payload data transmitters in Earth Observation (EO) missions are moving from X-band to K-band (i.e. 25.5 to 27 GHz), where the downlink data rates can be increased due to the four times higher availability of bandwidth than in X-band. In addition, an interest is certainly growing in the field of small-size satellites and cube-sats. Therefore, there is a need to reduce the size/mass of the K-Band transmitter while increasing the DC-to-RF efficiency in order to relax the constraints of the thermal management systems at platform level.

Today, Ge is used as a growth template for III-V based solar cells and also serves as the lowest active junction. While the thickness of the Ge on solar cell level is around 140µm, actually only 10-20µm are really active. Therefore, in order to become thinner and lighter, solar cell manufacturers start to thin down the Ge wafers after cell processing by grinding, etching or lift-off processes (to reduce weight). However, this Ge waste is today not recovered since no economical process exists.

The space industry and allied agencies have long acknowledged the interest and added value of Model-Based System Engineering in expediting the design, development, deployment, and verification of space systems. The definition of models and equipment that can serve the diverse objectives of system engineering process has been the focus of numerous initiatives over the past few decades. The next stage is to employ MBSE broadly throughout the system life cycle across disciplines and the supply chain.

Recent studies have shown that remote sensing of floating marine plastic litter (MPL) is feasible from unmanned aerial systems, aircraft and satellite missions. However, in the infrared (IR) spectrum, water is a strong light absorber which makes the spectral detection and discrimination of plastics challenging. Additionally, MPL is often covered with living organisms and it is unclear what impact different thickness of biofouling may have on the spectral reflectance of floating plastic.