News
Stay up to date with all the incredible activities and opportunities driven by the TEC directorate
Discovery funding transforms ESA patents into commercial success
Whether sending European spacecraft to distant frontiers, studying our home planet in greater detail than ever before, or designing new launch systems, ESA activities drive the development of new technologies.
These technologies can be protected as patents, which ESA makes available to entities in its Member States for research or commercial uses. But there is a long way to go before a patent becomes a product.
Pure gold pin for space testing
Although this pure gold pin is not much bigger than the tip of a pencil, it is the ‘pulsing heart’ of ESA’s Low Earth Orbit Facility, LEOX.
Part of the Agency’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory , based at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, this test facility is vital for developing materials capable of withstanding the highly-erosive individual oxygen atoms prevailing at the top of the atmosphere, the result of standard oxygen molecules of the same kind found just above the ground being broken apart by powerful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Dust Contamination Effects & Mitigation for Lunar & Martian Surface Mission
As well as being a possible resource, dust poses a huge risk to missions. It is one of the most important issues we need to resolve to be able to carry out long-term exploration of the Moon and Mars.
ESA testing sensor network for smart city navigation
New infrastructure added to ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands is helping to test how tomorrow’s smart cities will operate in practice.
The HANSEL system is hosted in ESTEC’s Navigation Laboratory and allows linking to sensors across the site, providing insight into the collective networking and computing needed to get a variety of ‘intelligent elements’ to mesh seamlessly together – what the brain of a future smart city might look like.
Readying spacecraft to surf Venus’ atmosphere
ESA’s EnVision mission to Venus will perform optical, spectral and radar mapping of Earth’s sister planet. But before getting down to work the van-sized spacecraft needs to ‘aerobrake’ – lowering its orbit with thousands of passages through the planet’s hot, thick atmosphere for up to two years.
A unique ESA facility is currently testing candidate spacecraft materials to check they can safely withstand this challenging process of atmospheric surfing...
“EnVision as currently conceived cannot take place without this lengthy phase of aerobraking,” explains ESA’s EnVision study manager Thomas Voirin.
