For planet earth and beyond
A fully reconfigurable, software-defined, standardised satellite for the commercial telecommunications market is under development, as an ESA Partnership Project.
The second node in the most sophisticated laser communication network ever designed is ready to go into service.
Launch conditions together with the need to operate at high power levels presented a particular challenge when Airbus Defence and Space engineers – under the ARTES Competitiveness & Growth programme – set about developing a new series of Ku-band antenna feed chains.
Radiologists are investigating people’s medical conditions and pregnancies remotely thanks to an ESA-backed robotic technology. The set-up enables medics to care for some patients at a distance during the coronavirus pandemic. The system is already being used by rural hospitals, care homes and prisons across Europe and in Canada to investigate cardiac, abdominal, pelvic and urinary tract conditions.
The new Airbus Defence and Space (Airbus DS) Eurostar Neo satellite product line offers one of the largest communications payload capacity on the world market. The amount of thermal dissipation created by such large communication payloads requires innovative thermal control solutions, such as the East-West-Radiator system (EWRs). The Eurostar Neo EWRs will be based on a revolutionary EHD pump developed by APR Technologies (Sweden), under the technical lead of Airbus DS, in the frame of ESA’s Neosat Partnership Project.
Demand for oil has collapsed due to the coronavirus pandemic just as supply is about to strengthen because of a dispute between Russia and Saudi Arabia. As a result, oil prices have sunk to levels not seen since 2002.
A start-up company that has repurposed upcycled solar cells to generate ultraviolet light to disinfect people’s hands has won €20 000 in a hackathon designed to share and rapidly develop ideas to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
A free app that helps people observe social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus is about to launch.
Under ESA’s Neosat Partnership Project, Airbus Defence and Space has developed and qualified a new Command and Data Management Unit (CDMU), covering the needs for the full Eurostar Neo platform product range and potential platform derivatives. With the successful qualification of this key spacecraft unit, ESA Telecoms’ Partnership Projects demonstrates its ability to federate industry around large scale programmes to improve competitiveness.
Some £2.6 million to develop space-enabled technology and services that can strengthen the NHS’s response to coronavirus has been launched today by the UK Space Agency in collaboration with ESA.