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The objective of the study was twofold: i) to analyse the new dynamics of desertification in Southern African region (southern Mozambique, southern Zimbabwe and Northern South Africa) through main achievements of the DesertWatch-Extension; ii) to propose new methods for integration of EO data with different spatial and spectral resolutions, namely the new ESA Proba-V mission, and new field data, in particular, the map of risks on natural disasters in Mozambique.

Satellite based optical communications in space is rapidly progressing, involving an increasing number of flight validations in LEO, GEO and beyond. Various space agencies successfully demonstrated both, optical Inter-Satellite communication Links (ISL's) which have been validated in flight experiments since 2001 and direct-to-Earth (DTE) optical communications.

The scope of the project was to investigate and develop suitable strategies for the development of nano-enabled fibre reinforced plastics (neFRP) in order to produce materials tailored to the customer's needs and requirements. Within the scope of the work was also to establish a quality control system to assure that the produced products are of acceptable quality and can be integrated in functional parts for space applications.

The Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) region, home of the operational Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) GPS and Glonass, is becoming more and more exploited with the advent of the European Galileo and the Chinese Beidou constellations, both in their build-up phase. The sensitive applications of the navigation satellites and the absence of any natural sink mechanism, such as the atmospheric drag, call for a careful debris prevention policy able to preserve the MEO environment, avoiding in the future the problems now already faced by the LEO and the Geostationary Orbit (GEO) environments.