For planet earth and beyond
The ESAIL microsatellite for making the seas safer has picked up more than two million messages from 70 000 ships in a single day.
The reliable high-performance satellite was developed as an ESA Partnership Project to help European and Canadian space companies succeed in the competitive global telecommunications market.
New activity - Inflatable structures for telecom satellites.
The need for ever-more powerful telecom satellites drives the development of the associated technologies. A key example is the need for lightweight, large systems such as solar arrays and radiators, usually deployed in-orbit using booms and masts made from rigid structures. An alternative strategy is the use of inflatable structures, where deployment is achieved via/through gas inflation. Such structures are considered very attractive owing to their high mechanical packing efficiency and low mass. For this reason, inflatable structures are potentially a key technology that could have a wide range of applications for future satellite communications missions.
