InCubed stands for ‘Investing in Industrial Innovation’ and is a Public Private Partnership co-funding programme run by the ESA Φ-lab. InCubed focuses on developing innovative and commercially viable products and services that generate or exploit the value of Earth observation imagery and datasets. The programme has a very wide scope and can be used to co-fund anything from building satellites to ground applications and everything between or to develop new EO business models.

More information can be found here: https://incubed.esa.int 

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This cluster on Resilience, Crisis and Security regroups R&D activities linked to or contributing to these areas. 

There is an urgency to act for the protection of citizens, natural resources and critical infrastructures. Today mostly fragmented solutions exist across Europe, often not (well) known from those who could use them, thus reducing potential responsiveness that a coordinated approach could bring.

Following the adoption in November 2022 of the “Civil Security from Space” (CSS) programme and the “Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response” (R3) initiative to accelerate the use of space, actions were taken to help better know what exists and is being developed and identify capacity gaps to act more effectively by joining forces into a federated system of systems called SERENITY.

A substantial number of low-TRL and early step Discovery activities develop concepts and technologies that contribute to this field of security, crisis & resilience (see list of activities), helping building solutions for those acting on Earth. They could become part of SERENITY.

(draft - cluster in making)

Benefits of VLEO

Very Low Earth Orbits (VLEO), situated at an altitude between 100 and approximately 450 km (typically 250-350 km), offer a number of attractive properties for space applications, in comparison with higher altitudes LEOs. Low power and possibly low latency communication options, high resolution EO systems with small payloads, natural resiliency to debris build-up, are just a few advantages. VLEO may become attractive for a variety of low cost systems or constellations given the lower launch cost and higher versatility in launch options, such as micro-launchers and in-orbit transfer vehicles. Furthermore, the more benign radiation environment widens the opportunities for utilisation of terrestrial grade, general purpose, electronic components.

The interest of VLEO comes from commercial and defence applications as well as scientific interest. As an example, ESA has operated GOCE, a geodynamics and geodetics mission to determine the stationary gravitational field, in a sun-synchronous orbit at an average altitude of 250 km for over 4 years until November 2013. It used a dedicated platform form factor and a highly efficient ion propulsion system to compensated for the drag force experienced by the satellite’s orbit in real-time.

Satellites in VLEO will naturally decay thanks to the presence of residual drag and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at the end of their operational lifetime, minimising the risk of collisions in space and not contributing to the increase of the number of space debris.

Challenges of VLEO

However, operating at such altitudes comes with challenges, such as shortened lifespans due to residual atmosphere, active orbit maintenance, surface erosion from atomic oxygen, short communication windows.

Related Activities and Resources

This topical cluster lists activities that result from ideas submitted to OSIP, including but not necessarily limited to those of the dedicated VLEO call for ideas from 2023.

In addition to these, ESA has a number of ongoing activities related to VLEO missions and technologies, including:

• Skimsat, a study for a technology demonstration in-orbit testbed  (link)
• LoLaSat, an in-orbit low-latency experiment (link)
• Atmosphere-breathing electric propulsion systems for very low orbit (link)

Selected VLEO related ESA papers and resources

• ...

Selected VLEO related events

• ...

 

(under preparation)

As identified since 2018 in the ESA Technology Strategy (p 16), "Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the core of most current digital disruptions, accelerating competition and speeding up digital transformations. Worldwide, public and private sector investment in AI is still growing fast, with the primary investors being the digital giants. The largest share goes to machine learning, characterised by its multiuse and nonspecific applications, followed by computer vision, natural languages, autonomous vehicles and smart robotics (retail and manufacturing) and virtual agents (services).
ESA has been at the leading edge of academic AI research related to space with activities on deep learning already performed already in early 2015. Φ-sat-1 (2020) included the first AI to be carried on a European Earth observation mission. To avoid downlinking less than perfect images, the Φ-sat-1 artificial intelligence chip filters them out."

This topical cluster groups AI related activities, which typically started as ideas submitted on OSIP, and then got selected as successful proposals. 

AI related activities by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team are visible here, as well as related publications.

related ESA webstories:

• Will the future of onboard spacecraft guidance be neural based?. 19/06/2024 (...)
• ESA extends AI and cloud computing to space, 02/05/2023
• AI in Earth observation: a force for good, 09/05/2024
• Deep Space Learning, 01/10/2015
•  

Related AI-focussed ESA missions:

• Φsat-2, a cubesat designed to demonstrate how different Artificial Intelligence technologies can advance observing Earth from space.
• OPS-SAT, devoted to demonstrating drastically improved mission control capabilities, that will arise when satellites can fly more powerful on-board computers.
• ...

 

Related ESA-organised events and conferences (partial list)

• SPAICE: AI in and for Space, 17. – 19. September 2024, ECSAT (UK)

 

Related ESA resources:

• Kelvins (data driven competitions)
• Optimize (collection of problems for evolutionary computations)

 

 

Small sats and CubeSats are proving to be very useful for in-orbit demonstration as well as dedicated space missions. Supporting their development ESA encourage a new approach to spacecraft integration and highlights an affordable way to deploy small payloads.

The ideal place to test new space technologies is actually in space. 

For some technologies and techniques and some new applications, it is deemed necessary to complete the development cycle going up to in-orbit demonstration (corresponding to the topmost Technology Readiness Level 9). Also new practices, techniques and tools for design, development, verification and mission operations need to be exercised in small, yet representative, missions to orbit. To reach this goal, ESA has been developing small satellite In-Orbit Demonstration missions since the turn of the century, supplemented byCubeSat missions since 2013. These are funded under the In-Orbit Demonstration part (Fly Element) or specific component of the General Support Technology Programme (GSTP). Please find here more information on ESA's in orbit demonstrations.

CubeSats also bring great versatility to space exploration and are helping discover new knowledge in our Solar System, as demonstrated by the Hera Mission (which will fly with two CubeSats onboard). Please find here a list of all our technology driven cubesat and small sats. 

ESA has been globally pioneering the approach to a sustainable space environment. Following earlier studies and developments, since 2009 ESA's CleanSpace initiative develops European wide technology developments, standards, concepts and missions. One of the four targets of ESA's Technology Strategy is to invert Europe’s contribution to space debris by 2030, and ESA's Zero Debris approach aims to totally stop the generation of debris in valuable orbits by 2030.   

This approach has been initiated by the Agency in response to the catastrophic degradation of the Low-Earth Orbit environment. Indeed, space debris experts have already announced that the point of no return has been reached and that the debris population will keep growing even if we would totally stop launching objects in space, although at a far reduced rate. Thus, we must promptly act to mitigate this urgent issue.

The Zero Debris approach shows the Agency’s ambition to leave our precious space environment in a clean state.

ESA has a number of ambitious activities ongoing, including the application of a new ESA Space Debris Mitigation policy, which will make the new ESA standard ESSB-U-ST-007 applicable to ESA mission not having yet completed SRR. This ambitious standard materialises the first step towards a full implementation of Zero Debris approach to ESA missions by 2030.

In parallel, to support the transition of European space sector to develop product lines to be compliant with short and long-term Zero Debris goals, technical activities are being put in place though different ESA technology programmes. They focus on the swift progress on topics such as:

• Maturation of best practices and technical standards;
• promote evolution of European product lines for spacecraft of different classes;
• demonstration of safe and affordable active debris removal and in-orbit servicing;
• improvement of operational procedures, collision avoidance and technologies to support space traffic coordination.

ESA specifically welcomes new ideas and concepts from industry and academia to achieve this objective. This cluster provides a list of Discovery element activities addressing this objective.

 

What are solar power satellites or space-based solar power stations?

The concept of space-based solar power uses the wireless transmission of solar energy collected in space by solar power satellites, for use on Earth, on the Moon or on other planets. Solar power satellites can benefit from higher solar illumination, unfiltered by atmospheres, or even permanent sunlight in some orbits. They therefore offer the possibility to transmit clean energy, in a flexible way, to different remote users in space, on Earth or on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.

In the long term, solar power satellites have the potential to mitigate climate change through the provision of clean energy. Earlier applications might be in space, for example to support exploration of the Moon and Mars. Compared to energy collection on the surface of a planet, a satellite’s solar collectors have the benefit of being unobstructed by a planet's atmosphere or local topography and can operate independently of a planet's tilt or rotation.

This concept was first described by Tsiolkovsky 100 years ago and first proposed as an engineering concept by Glaser in 1968. The development of various technological building blocks has progressed since then, and over the years many approaches to SPS technology have been proposed, from mirror satellites(1)(2)(3), to microwave beaming(4)(5), to laser technologies(6) To date, only select subsystems have been realized(7), but more and more solutions are being proposed for the near- to mid-term(8)(9)(10)(11). 

Why are solar power satellites not yet a reality?

Solar power satellites are by design relatively large structures and require advances in a number of key technical areas that push the boundaries of what is currently feasible in space. Some of these current technological bottlenecks include, but are not limited to:

• Very large structures (manufacturing, deployment)
• Construction (materials, modularity, in-orbit manufacturing, robotics...)
• Power generation and onboard energy conversion (high voltages, efficient solar to electric and electric to microwave/laser conversions)
• Thermal systems (efficient large radiators and distributed thermal subsystems)
• Wireless power transmission systems (laser/microwave generation, control, focusing, pointing...)
• Microwave/laser to electric conversion at receiving site(s)
• Operations (station keeping, autonomy, safety, resilience and redundancy, maintenance and servicing, re-fuelling including with in-space resources)
• Control (structures, formations, wireless power transmission beams)

In-Space Manufacturing, which can be defined as the processing of materials (brought from Earth or sourced from space) into parts, products, or infrastructure, directly in space, is expected to be an important component and an enabler of the emerging in-space economy.
The capability to manufacture spacecraft hardware directly in space can represent a paradigm change for space activities, opening up a number of possibilities for spacecraft design and performance improvement.

By alleviating limitations associated to the fairing size and the launch phase loads, significantly larger and lighter spacecraft structures are enabled. This can lead to higher payload capacity from larger solar arrays, higher data throughput from larger antennas or enhanced science mission return from larger aperture telescopes. Altogether, allowing a higher performance-to-launch-cost ratio, and introducing the possibility of in-space repair and later recycling, foster increased sustainability of future space activities, in a wide range of applications for telecommunications, Earth observation, navigation, or science.

In the field of human and robotic exploration, manufacturing in space enables on-demand production of infrastructure and hardware at the exploration destination, including with locally available resources. This reduces the required needed amount of spares, simplifies mission logistics and significantly improves the sustainability of the missions.

Leveraging the unique characteristics of the space environment, such as prolonged microgravity and hard vacuum, products with properties not achievable on Earth could be produced, including optical fibres, semiconductors or specialty alloys, with applications in high performance computing or high temperature aeronautic components. This opens attractive prospects for commercialisation of high added value products on Earth.

Realising the promise of this new paradigm for the various applications requires a number of technological elements to be advanced, including manufacturing processes and fabrication equipment which can operate in space conditions, in-situ validation methods and design guidelines for the products and structures manufactured in space. Such an endeavour is multi-disciplinary by nature and covers a range of scales, from system-level to material-level developments.