Digital solutions for autonomy for space transportation systems, design and simulation tools – targeting demonstration

Expected Outcome:

The topic encompasses actions within the scope of the co-programmed European Partnership on Globally Competitive Space Systems (‘Space Partnership’) in the areas of satellite communication (SatCom), Earth Observation (EO) and New Commercial Space Transportation Solutions and is part of cohesive activities in the domain of digital developments under the grand heading of “digitalisation for commercial space solutions”.

Under the area of Access to Space related to New Space Transportation Solutions, this topic focusses on the Mid to High TRL level developments of key technologies required to strengthen competitiveness in this domain.

Cost reduction, enhanced availability, and improved reliability must be reached by harnessing the advantages of reusability and modularity. Areas for launch service improvement are e.g., health monitoring systems, enabling real time subsystem monitoring through all mission phases, development of technologies and functional building blocks with a focus on digital solutions for autonomy, development of low cost/low mass sensors and efficient avionics. The demand for readily accessible off-the-shelf modular solutions and products, caters to the needs of all launcher manufacturers.

Project results are expected to contribute to one or several of the following expected outcomes:

• The ability to identify and locate structural damage remotely (like cracks, corrosion, delamination or structural weakening) within the transportation systems before it leads to significant failure.
• The ability to provide autonomous thermo-mechanical monitoring enabling tracking changes in temperature, mechanical behaviour and loads experienced by the transportation systems, to predict and autonomous prevent failures.

This will contribute to developing, deploying global space-based services applications and data and contribute to fostering the EU's space sector competitiveness, as stated in the expected impact of this destination.

Scope:

To tackle the above-mentioned expected outcomes, the following R&I should be addressed: R&I on advanced technologies and digital sensors for new space transportation, such as smart avionics with modularity and reusability drivers, health monitoring system and smart sensors, and structural health monitoring addressing thermo-mechanical monitoring and damage detection, ground and flight software for data management even by use of AI-algorithms.

The developments should aim at on-ground or in-orbit demonstration focusing on software and digital tools.

Proposals are expected to promote cooperation between different actors (industry, SMEs and research institutions) and consider opportunities to quickly turn technological innovation into commercial use in space via e.g., on-ground or in orbit demonstration.

Proposals under this topic should explore synergies and be complementary to already funded actions in the context of technology development at component level. In particular, it is expected that projects make use of existing European technologies and/or building blocks at component level contributing to European non-dependence and strengthen competitiveness, and this should be clearly presented in the proposal. Furthermore, proposed activities should be complementary to H2020 and Horizon Europe funded projects, national activities and activities funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Globally Competitive Space Systems’ (GCSS). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on results to the European Partnership ‘Globally Competitive Space Systems’ (GCSS) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

This topic contributes to the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) and addresses Space technologies falling under the sectors of “digital technologies” and “deep tech innovation”. This topic addresses objectives stated in the STEP Regulation, e.g., the development of critical technologies and safeguarding and strengthening their EU value chain. This topic will help reduce strategic dependencies from outside of the EU for components and equipment for the EU Space Programme, as well as for other European space applications.

In this topic, the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content should be addressed only if relevant in relation to the objectives of the research effort.