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The SAVOIR/SAG identified the modular RTU as a high priority building block. This is one of the key avionics building blocks as the provided functionality is required by the majority of ESA missions.

An EQM has been developed and validated. FR in June/July 2017. EQM Test completed!. The EQM will be used as EM of the Proba3 IEU and it has been used to qualify the design of the IEU of Proba3. EQM campaign concluded and the unit is to be delivered to Proba3.

The Sensor on a chip activity has shown the feasibility of a 75g, 0.2 watt, 30 arcsecond accuracy fully autonomous star tracker with all functionality implemented on a single chip. Several key unknowns however still exist and can only be verified by test.These include: Optical quality achievable, on chip NVM behavious, radiation behaviour of key functions, noise cross talk and power management. Phase 0 of this predevelopment shall concentrate on demonstrating the optical elements including bonding to the silicon substrate and environmental testing.

The activity will focus on two specific modes which are under review for general or legal purposes: safe mode and deorbitation mode.In order to maximize commonality and reuse across all future platforms, a generic safe mode appears an interesting option combining magnetic actuators and the propulsion system. It performs similarly on any orbit with any spacecraft, making the most of the advantages of both technologies.

The activity shall review current estimation techniques employed in space industry and make a analysis in the face of improvement, new demands and functionalities related to space applications in the view of high accuracy control demands ranging from science missions, exploration and vision based control to space transportation guidance navigation and control applications. The study shall execute the robust and high performance estimation and filtering techniques for accurate state reconstruction for hybrid integrated navigation purposes including vision based hybridisation.

Missions require more and more stringent stability performances, for which the performances of the reaction wheels become drivers.A recurrent issue is the wheel friction instability, resulting in fast variations of the wheel response, which adversely affects the pointing stability.This activity will:- examine the little understood effects of the lubrication system and environment on the stability and consistency of the delivered torque- characterise the impact of wheel instabilities on the pointing and stability- investigate solutions (at AOCS level, at wheel level, at system level, at HW o

An experienced AOCS contractor shall develop the generic requirements and framework for AOCS units modelling and together with some unit supplier(s) develop a first set of simulation models. The initiative will consider both functional models of adequate fidelity needed for AOCS system design, and interface-representative models for avionics verification on Virtual Test Bench. This contract should be followed by dedicated model developments with each unit supplier to produce and validate, against real unit tests, the models for their units.

The OBCP-BB study has performed the following tasks: Assessment of current OBCP implementations for Space systems, considering both Application procedures (OBAPs) and Operation procedures (OBOPs), and providing some statistics figure about the OBCPs used in different ESA missions and projects Assessment of the ECSS-E-ST-70-01C standard particularly in the context of the specification of the OBCP software building block in the FSW Reference Architecture. The analysis has covered both the OBCP concept and the system capabilities defined by the ECSS standard.