The growth of the human population, industrialization of developing countries and rising living standards for the population are continuously increasing global energy demand, that in the next 30 years is forecast to double.

In the current global landscape, the escalating threat of global warming has become a paramount concern for the future of our planet, with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions identified as a primary culprit. To counteract this looming crisis, significant efforts are underway among major political bodies to formulate legislation aimed at curbing emissions and steering the transition towards eco-friendly practices in the most impactful industrial processes.

Magnetic materials, both with soft and hard magnetic behavior, are key components in many devices aboard any spacecraft, such as motors, mechanisms, actuators and sensors. The most common route for the manufacturing of magnets is the sintering process, which produces the highest magnetic performance possible but it is energy intensive and requires molds for each geometry. The alternative is the use of bonded magnets, which are composite materials composed of a polymeric matrix with a high content of magnetic filler.

In-orbit molecular contamination can rapidly degrade the performance of sensitive sub-systems, such as optical instruments, thermal control surfaces and solar arrays. In existing spacecraft design, most of the effort is concerned with reducing the contamination potential at source e.g. by limiting high outgassing materials, reducing view factors between materials and the surfaces etc. However this is generally a very complex task, and, despite best efforts, contamination in-orbit cannot be fully eliminated.

Aluminium-based alloys obtained by a rapid solidification process have been successfully used for manufacturing optical mirrors. The maximum size of this type of aluminium mirrors is limited by the size of the billet, i.e. currently considered to be approximately 500 mm with and homogeneous microstructure. Consequently, the current manufacturing processes allow to produce mirrors with an effective area limited to a maximum dimension of 400 mm . The need for larger Aluminium-based mirrors is coming from scientific missions that require a large collecting area.

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.