News
Stay up to date with all the incredible activities and opportunities driven by the TEC directorate
Vacuum Soak for Satellite Brain
A spacecraft computer is not much use if it cannot keep on running in space conditions – so this qualification model of QinetiQ Space’s new onboard computer design has just spent two weeks in a thermal vacuum chamber in ESA’s Mechanical Systems Laboratory at ESTEC in the Netherlands, exposed to the equivalent hard vacuum and temperature extremes of Earth orbit and deep space.
Teach an Earth-observing Satellite to Know What it Sees
For decades now Earth observation satellites have been monitoring our ever-changing home planet; the next step is to enable them to recognise what they see. The latest public challenge for the machine learning community from ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team is to train satellite software to identify features within the images it acquires – with the winning team getting the unique opportunity to load their solution to ESA's OPS-SAT nanosatellite and test it in orbit.
Smarter Satellites: ESA Discovery Accelerates AI in Space
Could we capitalise on the Earth-based digital revolution to make our satellites smarter?
ESA Discovery is funding 12 projects that will explore the potential of applying the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing paradigms to make satellites more reactive, agile and autonomous. This could generate new practical applications that support life on Earth and our exploration of other planets.
COMET upgrade for ESA’s mission design centre
ESA has a new tool for designing space missions.
The Agency’s Concurrent Design Facility – bringing together different experts for the rapid creation and evaluation of virtual spacecraft designs – has adopted an advanced software tool, COMET, which will help extend the use of digital models into further mission development phases. Its open source nature means it is freely available beyond ESA Member States, facilitating international cooperation with wider space agencies, research institutions or companies.
Radio Eye on Tree-counting BIOMASS
The largest antenna ever tested in ESA’s Hertz radio frequency test chamber is this 5-m diameter transponder antenna, which will operate down on the ground to help calibrate the BIOMASS mission, which will chart all the forests on Earth.
