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The Mars Surface Platform Capabilities Study aimed to provide ESA with an assessment of the state of the art in Mars lander technologies using ESA/European technologies with flight heritage. Airbus’ Mars lander experience is taken from the Beagle 2 probe launched in 2003 on board Mars Express.

The objectives of the study were to:

The interest in HAPS is increasing in many areas, from military and security to commercial services. On the telecommunications side, HAPS are seen as relays to provide internet services worldwide, and as a possible complement to satellites. On the Earth observation side, the near-space location of the HAPS enables new services or could improve the existing satellite ones. From the satellite or from the HAPS market sides, it is important to understand how both systems can offer complementary services, and what the possible synergies between them are.

A set of tools has been developed to enable assessment of the feasibility of ultra-low thrust transfers in regions of multi-body gravity field influence. Aspects include:

Propulsion passivation is most of the time feasible for running missions, using thrusters and existing AOCS modes, whatever the number of tanks and for both monopropellant and bipropellant systems.
For monopropellant systems the propulsion passivation may be:
-Partial for tank(s) with membrane. All the hydrazine under the membrane may be depleted but the pressurant gas above the membrane cannot be depleted. The final tank pressure is close to typically 5 bars at the end of mission.