Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PERIOD (PERIOD - PERASPERA In-Orbit Demonstration)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-01-01 bis 2022-12-31
The ISMA industry can bring revolution to space market achieving a sustainable space ecosystem and bringing new services. The PERIOD consortium is confident that a decade from now, considering a stepwise evolution, many different capabilities will be introduced. Large-antenna commercial satellites autonomously assembled in space will provide citizens with a wide range of services, and scientific satellites will allow us to see further into deep space than ever before. Payloads will be autonomously exchanged on standard reconfigurable satellites. The majority of satellites will be repaired, serviced or de-orbited in space, meaning that we will be able to better face the space debris issue. Advanced space robotics will be used for local and autonomously manufacturing and assembly on the space stations in LEO and lunar orbit.
The specific objectives of the PERIOD project in phase A/B1 were to develop the core technologies ESROCOS, ERGO and InFuse to TRL5, to evaluate the available Standard Interconnect components (SIROM, HOTDOCK, iSSI) for the specific assembly demonstration scenario in a benchmark, to evaluate assembly capability in a breadboard for ESROCOS, ERGO, InFuse, I3DS and SIs, to define an orbital demonstrator concept along with its system technical requirements for satellite manufacturing & assembly and for attachment & refuelling experiment up to the System Requirements Review (SRR), and to implement communication and dissemination activities to inform the space community and potential customers on the In-Space Manufacturing and Assembly (ISMA) capabilities and provide transparency on risks and mitigations. The successful implementation of these objectives will lead in the future to the generation of independent European capacities allowing Europe building the future orbital infrastructure and being competitive on the ISMA markets.
For developing the ISMA market customers are expecting a robust concept validation (value for customer, demonstration of the capabilities), transparency (communication on needs, risks and mitigations), provider reliability (technology mastering, standardization) and profitability (availability of accurate business cases, regulation, Insurance & Policies). The efficiency of the measures required to positively impact these four criteria is lowered by barriers related to the low technology maturity, the insufficient level of demonstration and the lack of communication, standardization and regulation in this domain. These barriers are the main explanation for the current ISMA & OOS market immaturity. PERIOD is overcoming some of these barriers and therefore satisfying core market and customer expectations by advancing on technology and process maturation, verification means definition for the Factory, robust demonstration, transparency on risks and mitigations, and addressing ISMA & OOS market and use cases, standardization and regulation. Eliminating these barriers will be one major contribution of the project for realizing the European ambition to provide independent ISMA capabilities to be implemented in European commercial on-orbit services.