Projects

Designing, building and testing the most advanced and first commercially-viable picosatellite in conjunction with a PocketQube Orbital Deployer - the means with which to launch a large number of PocketQubes profitably.

Objective of the contract is to industrialize the production and testing of more than 900 PG thermal straps (Flexlinks), using Airbus DS NL’s patented High Performance Radiator (HiPeR) technology.

A radically new type of OSR, consisting of a CERMET-based thin film coating deposited on the first surface of a flexible foil, featuring low solar absorbance, high thermal emissivity, and extreme durability to the space environment. The foil can be very thin, and made of any of a wide range of space compliant materials, from metals, to polymers and composites.

The ABBM provides a flexible platform for use in operational ground stations. The highly modular architecture allows the system to be rapidly scaled to support complex spacecraft with multi-carrier downlinks, uplinks, radiometric and baseband processing or lightweight systems for smaller missions. The platform architecture allows the system to support legacy, current and future modulation and coding requirements.

RazorLink® Smart Networking is an SD-WAN solution that offers a seamless, carrier agnostic transition between terrestrial and satellite communications - a headline objective for 5G services.

T3: A compact star tracker for small satellites with moderate requirements for attitude determination accuracy.

Development and qualification of a lightweight, low-cost reflector for C, X, Ku and Ka-band applications

In this project a 3-axis mechanically tracking antenna has been developed by SpaceCom A/S. Main design goals are: State-of-the-art performance when exposed to tough vibration/shock specifications and high tracking accuracy (<0.2°) in rough seas, at a competitive price.

Extended lifetime normally-closed high pressure valve for orbital propulsion systems

This project incorporates the implementation of DVB-RCS2 in the SatLink system, in embedded SW and FW for the hardware units developed in another ARTES3-4 project, and as SW on SatLink NMS and NCC.

The objective of this activity is to survey existing radome designs and identify relevant performance characteristics applicable to radomes used by mobile satellite ground user terminal antennas operating in Ku-band and Ka-band in different mobile environments.

The objective of the MIGNON project is to develop and evaluate Ka-band surface mountable miniaturized cavity filters realized in multilayer micro-machined technolog

The On-board Signal Processing platform serves as a common core for a product family and is built around a highly integrated commercial SRAM-based FPGA. Each product within the family is customized by the development of mission- or market-specific signal processing firmware and RF front-ends.

T6 High Power Electric Propulsion System (HPEPS) is a flexible and modular 5kW-class EP system to provide for geostationary communication satellites (GEO comsats) high Specific Impulse electric propulsion for orbit raising; station keeping, comsat GEO repositioning (as required) and satellite disposal to graveyard orbit at end of mission.

The Damped Ultra-light Deployment Mechanism - a hinge consisting out of elastic collapsible CFRP blades and a damping device- is developed to deploy a wide range of structures, smoothly with a minimal end shock based on a Shape Memory Alloy spring. The ultra-lightweight design combined with high stiffness, thermal stability and low power consumption is the key in this product.

ComDev Europe (traded as Honeywell) are seeking to take advantage of the configurability and weight saving of software defined radio in a new high speed X-band downlink capability. Balancing spectrum, ground station availability and the high-speed modulation currently available, we are developing a low mass, power and volume system with reduced complexity in a dependable product, targeting the ever-growing data requirements of future missions.

SatNetCode empowers robust and powerful end-to-end networking over multi-hop integrated satellite networks in potentially difficult mobile scenarios where packet loss and interruptions may occur. By applying adaptive Network Coding – with re-encoding option per network – significant improvements can be obtained over traditional approaches. Application areas include aerial, vehicular and maritime users with sources like video and other critical data. The focus is specifically on video over multiple hops.

This project aims to develop an electronic scanning multibeam antenna ground station combining gateway and TT&C services in Ka band for LEO and MEO satellite megaconstellations.

Delta Development and qualification of PCU derived from latest PCU generation to address Chinese market demand

Based on HPS/INVENT CFRP technologies a 2.4 m Q/V band reflector with highest accuracy was designed, manufactured and tested. The design concept proved to be applicable for multi-beam telecom application. With a frequency band of 37.5 GHz to 51.4 GHz this is the next step for a Terabit satellite to provide high-speed internet.

This study examines various technical solutions and associated technologies for design compact feed network from L-band to C-band and validates the most promising by manufacturing and testing a representative EM of critical parts of the network. Activities were focused on the feed network to have a significant number of beams while maintaining acceptable mass and dimensions of the feed network.

Experiments of optical multi aperture up-links between OGS and ARTEMIS satellite executed in the past did not show the expected effects due to TX diversity.

The application of high temperature adhesives and potting materials becomes more challenging when not only a very good thermal endurance is required, but also where the application is in high voltage ranges. For Telecom missions, this applies especially for travelling wave tubes, power transfer applications e.g slip rings, electrical propulsion power supplies and power connectors and lines.
In this activity, adhesives with enhanced thermal stability and insulation properties for high voltage applications have been selected and validated.

The aim of the project is to develop a new generation of Command Receiver to offer improved performances and flexibility to operators and prime contractors. This new product implements a CDMA demodulation mode increasing significantly the immunity against interferers.

CESI project was aimed at developing of high efficiency large area solar cells from 6” Ge wafers.
Large area devices lead to a significant benefit at space power generators level, as they reduce, for a given power, the panel complexity saving space and weight. CTJ30-CLASS is the building-block for the future generations of PVAs, especially for high power demanding missions.

The RAD-EDFA-HP programme covers the development of high power optical fibre amplifiers (OFAs) for space laser communication.
Amplifiers are developed for C-band operation with 30dBm and 35dBm output power to cover the applications of LEO to ground, intra and inter satellite links (LEO to GEO and GEO to GEO).

Arralis have delivered a Ka Band Transceiver Chipset to the European Space Agency for space communications applications.

The activities under the SAAF project address the ancillary functionalities and auto-test capabilities that coupled with a power producing Solar Array Simulator (SAS) would provide the full simulation and verification capability of the power and dynamic aspects of a spacecraft Solar Array.

The Low Rate VSAT SCADA Network development has resulted in a unique low-data rate all-in-one DVB-S2/RCS integrated terminal optimized for Industrial IoT applications.

Development of the next generation UHF/VHF Antenna Systems

The SKATE project is focused on the development and test of a proof-of-concept of a highly integrated Ka-band low cost BFN/RF front-end using SiGe MMIC with a high number of control nodes on chip for user mobile terminal using. The final aim is to achieve a very significant cost reduction of the array and hence the user terminal recurrent cost.

AR4Telecom main goal was the development and testing of SW/HW tools which could bring the benefits of Augmented Reality tech into the realm of AIT/V work-related processes, focusing on the increasing of productivity while reducing human related error instances. LusoSpace (PT) and ENEA (RO) joined forces to build this solution.

Ferrite Phase shifter driver unit for Flexible antenna applications.

Tight frequency reuse, e.g., beyond a 4-color scheme to increase a multi-beam satellite system’s capacity could make signal detection ‘interference-limited’, where conventional interference suppressing techniques would be ineffective, requiring rather some sophisticated/novel techniques, e.g., those exploiting interfering signals, to revive the overly degraded desired signals. The effectiveness of two such techniques was investigated and the results reported in this project.

This development intends to provide a cost efficient solution for applications involving on-board Processing of RF signals or Data Collection, for low bandwidth missions, targeting in particuliar Internet-of-Things (IoT) / low data rate Machine-To-Machine (M2M) communications, but also spectrum survey, geo-location, data collection in general.

In this project, the Space Norway led consortium with Kongsberg Seatex and FFI have
measured the actual downlink performance of the world´s first VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) payload in space under realistic conditions in the Arctic and at other locations. At the time of contract award, in 2015, the downlink waveforms were not specified and no satellite capacity was available.

ESA ARTES C&G program supports MDA in the development and qualification of new antenna design in a context of a megaconstellation. Manufacturing, assembly and testing methods suitable for larger volume production of spacecraft antenna will be demonstrated in order to meet the demand of current and future satellite constellations.

THALES ALENIA SPACE IN FRANCE is looking for solutions to improve
its competitiveness in terms of Ka-band equipments, payloads and
satellites. As far as Ka-band output filtering is concerned, use of
Temperature Compensated OMUX is foreseen. This technology leads to
an improvement of the input power limitation, footprint, useful bandwidth
and electrical in band performances
The five channels high power Ka band full TC OMUX qualification allows
to increase the competitiveness of THALES ALENIA SPACE IN FRANCE
products by fulfilling identified customer requirements as Military, DTH
analogic, HTS and VHTS satellite applications.

The Rx2 unit is the second-generation command receiver designed and manufactured at Kongsberg Norspace. The command receiver is to be used for spacecraft telemetry, tracking and commands (TT&C). The Unit design is in-orbit programmable up to 750MHz bandwidth, and prepared for receiving commands and ranging signals at C-band, Ku-band or Ka-band.

RUAG Space AB have developed and qualified horn assemblies for global Ku-Band coverage TTC, Ka-Band IOT payload Rx/Tx and Beacon. The RUAG GNSS antenna design has within the scope of work evolved to withstand harsher random environment. All antennas are well adapted for new platforms such as NEOSAT.