The widespread use of COTS in LEO is constrained by their susceptibility to faults and the difficulty in implementing custom fault detection and recovery actions (FDIR) closely to the system in question. Thus, faults may pass undetected until they propagate outside the COTS system and cause a significant impact on the spacecraft. This delay in recovery actions may contribute to lower in-orbit reliability and availability. The challenge is in supporting designers who wish to protect their systems via recurrent methods and tools which are also cost-effective. 

ESA?s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission launched in 2009 is based on an L-band interferometric radiometer providing images of the entire earth globe every three days. Several studies have been conducted in the past few years to define a different antenna configuration which could allow to improve the image quality and simultaneously reduce the imaging time.

The design process of a typical attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) involves the significant effort of tuning and validation of static controllers or state estimators, calibrated for each mission phase/mode. The transition between these controllers/observers may occur without performance guarantee, as well as provoking settling impacts. The tuning effort and Verification and Validation (VV) process can be improved by Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) techniques.

Based on flexible PVA equipped blankets, solar array concepts are to be devised, which are low in cost and which can pack tightly into limited stowed volumes (target range 25-40 kW/m3).

The PhaNi-Neutron project, conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS,
focused on the phase and strain monitoring during the laser based direct energy deposition (DED-LB/M) of
Ni-superalloys using in-situ neutron and synchrotron diffraction techniques. The project aimed to enhance
the understanding of the solidification processes and phase evolution in additive manufacturing, specifically for the nickel superalloys IN718 and IN625.

Iodine has been recognised as interesting propellant for electric propulsion applications since it allows to significantly reduce the cost and complexity of the propulsion system due to the fact that it is solid at room temperature and sublimates directly to gas at moderate temperatures. While iodine propellant has many advantages, there are also some challenges to overcome due to the fact that iodine is highly reactive.