In recent years, surface-penetrating radars have formed a part of several ESA missions in both monostatic and bi-static configurations. Such radars can be found, for instance, on board Mars Express where, using MARSIS, the Martian sub-surface is sensed, as well as on board Rosetta where CONSERT was used to probe the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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With the launch of the first Sentinel satellites, a new era in Earth observation has started that allows for the development of new approaches that use these novel observations at high temporal frequencies and fine spatial resolution with complementary information from the optical and microwave spectral domains. One very important application for is the monitoring of crops.

According to the United Nation Environment Program (2005), “Marine Litter” is defined as any item that has been made or used by people and deliberately or accidently discarded either directly into the sea or coast or transported from land into the marine environment.

The performance of the future GNSS systems will be driven by more and more demanding applications asking for the ultimate accuracy in the most challenging scenarios and under every condition.

The incorporation of inter-satellite-links to the Galileo architecture is under detailed assessment by the GNSS Evolution Program, given its visible potential to:- Enhance the overall constellation command-ability- Enhance the overall constellation monitoring-ability- Simplify the Ground Segment, reducing the number of remote ground stations- Enhance the navigation message accuracy- Enhance constellation autonomyThe incorporation of inter-satellite-links to Galileo imply an important evolution of its functional and physical architecture.

The European space industry and ESA programs lack information on RF breakdown (Multipactor) when ferrites and dielectrics are used.

Background and justification:

Bandwidth, frequency and power reconfigurable payload architectures are currently under development by major satellite manufacturers. Today's fixed bandwidth filters are a major bottle neck in such systems and have led to the implementation of reconfigurable filters. These new reconfiguration scenarios require flexible converters and, hence, flexible filters to be accommodated after the down/up conversion.