For planet earth and beyond
The ESA Council appointed Dr Josef Aschbacher as the next Director General of ESA, for a period of four years. He will succeed Prof. Jan Wörner, whose term of office ends on 30 June 2021.
Providing exceptional value for in-orbit technology demonstration at a minimal expenditures, ESA’s Hosted Payloads will have clocked 7 years of continuous operations in-orbit at the end of 2020. At the forefront of laser and Q/V band communications, the Hosted Payloads demonstrate ESA’s Partnership Projects ability to develop, implement and validate innovative end-to-end systems.
The Preliminary Design Review for the Dual Solid State Power Amplifier (DSSPA) developed by SENER (Spain) in the frame of ESA’s Pacis 3 Partnership Project has been completed successfully. The very first test results obtained on the 10W X-band DSSPA prototype have been presented and exhibit impressive performances.
Getting out in the fresh air is more ‘in’ than ever this year, and with FATMAP’s adventure platform, activities in the Great Outdoors have never been easier to plan. With the support of ESA Space Solutions, FATMAP have now added some crucial ‘live data’ enhanced features, which take the application to new heights.
The ‘maker’ movement in electronics and the meteoric rise of smartphones have led to a surge in small satellites - such as nano- and picosatellites (picosats are the tiniest of smallsats). But something has to propel these pocket-size payloads into space. The AlbaPod is the first flight-proven six unit (6p) ‘PocketQube’ or picosat satellite deployer, whose successful demonstration was performed under the ARTES Competitiveness & Growth programme.
A fully reconfigurable, software-defined, standardised satellite for the commercial telecommunications market is under development, with contributions from a new Partnership Project between satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space and ESA.
The ESAIL microsatellite for tracking ships at sea has captured 57 000 messages in its first 24 hours of operation, using advanced on-board processing algorithms.
A batch of 10 satellites is to be developed following the signing of a three-year Partnership Project between small satellite manufacturer AAC Clyde Space UK and ESA, with co-funding from the UK Space Agency.
ECO (Every Community Online) is the fifth project initiated and funded under the ARTES Partner Programme element with the aim of supporting industry-initiated Public Private Partnerships.
Our society, economy, security and sovereignty are increasingly dependent on digital infrastructures and more specifically on communication networks: any lack of coverage in some areas or loss of availability due to accidental or intentional disruption may have widespread impact and very negative consequences.