Nebula Public Library

Thermo-optical coatings are used to control and to protect sensitive surfaces of satellites and spacecrafts. The paints are mostly either black (high alpha) and conducting or they are white (low alpha) and non-conducting. Most paint also do not originate from Europe. COIN COAT is an acronym for COnducting Inert Non-hazardous COATings and wants to overcome the statement that a conducting paint needs to be black.

In this activity, Mission Control Space Services deployed a low-level implementation of the OPS-SAT SmartCam model using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), comparing against a high-level CPU model using Tensorflow Lite. Experiments showed that the FPGA implementation reproduced the precision and accuracy of the high-level model, while running at a slower speed. Further optimisations of the FPGA are expected to close the gap in timing and unlock new methods for deploying deep learning on spacecraft.

The driver behind the MoBaTe activity was to propose ways to improve the current software development and validation lifecycle using MBSE techniques to shift some of the system validation activities to the early stages of development. The roadmap to achieve this included identifying strategies, required model properties, modelling tools and languages needed to move from a requirements-based approach to a model-based approach. All this considering existing and established workflows and tools currently used by ESA.

Due to the ongoing miniaturisation and increased performance of electronics devices, alternative cooling methods are required, specifically mechanical pumping loops (MPL). Passive two-phase loops are not capable of cooling ESA's expected power densities up to 300 W/m², so pumped two-phase loops are forecasted to replace their passive counterparts. According to Lapensée et al., “the most important component of a MPL is the pump and a pump failure directly results in MPL system failure, a reliable pump is therefore of vital importance". Wits et al.