• Build and test an engineering model of innovative X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometer for the Moon
• Demonstrated instrument performance over temperature range during thermal-vac campaign
• Reduction of measurement fluctuation from 25.2% to 3.7 %
• Improvement of accuracy thanks to peak selection algorithm
• World record in term of energy resolution with this type of EDXRF instrument
• Free space weather measurement thanks to Time Domain MCA

Assessments to Prepare and De-Risk Technology Developments - Characterisation of a Liquid Crystal on Silicon Based Laser Beam Steerer for Applications in Free Space Optical Satellite Communications in Low Earth Orbit. 

In the conventional system approach, image stability requirements are met constraining the platform and instruments to a very quiet thermo-mechanical environment. Major limitations come from the difficulties to develop low noise reaction wheels and the huge mass penalty of a cold gas micropropulsion solution. For the GEO-HR mission, which targets 6-10 m spatial resolution from GEO, an active line of sight control is considered as a candidate solution.

Along 20 years of life sciences research in space, several full size microscopes were developed (phase contrast, fluorescence analysis, and recently the Advanced Light Microscope from NASA) to be used on board the ISS. However, such bulky systems appeared to prevent a versatile use and limit the potential of experiments that can be performed today on ground. In particular, none of them can be accommodated on an on board centrifuge to perform experiments in microgravity and at various G level. And for most of them, the samples are fixed on a glass slide and allow only static analyses.

The use of optical (laser) feeder-links for next generation telecommunication satellites is receiving strong interest from commercial telecommunication providers because it will soon not be possible to support the projected growth in bandwidth using radio frequency bands (e.g. Ka-band). Moving to higher radio frequencies such as the Q/V or W-bands does not dramatically improve available bandwidth, while it increases atmospheric attenuation to a level comparable with the laser communication bands. Cloud coverage can be mitigated by site diversity, namely by using multiple (e.g.

Optical high-resolution payloads require very high structural and thermal stability to work at their top performance. Performing a thermal analysis and being able to perform De-Risk activities is surely critical for what concerns optical payloads which is a highly competitive market.

The goal of the project was to develop a service as a product to simplify fitting DNN (Deep Learning Neural Networks) in on board HW to make better use of AI on space missions The role of the service is to support data processing engineers in reducing HW resources requirement of powerful DNN for image analysis to be executed onboard. 

The focus of study is to build near-IR capability onto Si CCDs for Time-Delay-Integration (TDI) applications, with the main requirement being charge domain summation, which allows the lowest noise performance on these types of devices. Currently there is no product that exists to do this. Si CCDs are a well-established technology which, whilst being an “old” technology, are still world leading in certain applications up to a wavelength of ~1μm.