The project has lasted 24 months during which two main activities have been led :
- development of rendezvous and robotic technologies, with the necessary level of autonomy
- definition of an in-orbit demonstration mission (phases A and B1 : preliminary design).
Although the project inherits technology developments, it has been decided to investigate the accessible market in order to define the in-orbit demonstration mission that will be most relevant to allow the creation of new business. This analysis has allowed to identify the potential market for On-Orbit Servicing, in Geostationary, Medium and Low Earth Orbits, together of the operations of interest depending on the customer : inspection, station keeping and attitude control takeover, refuelling, change or addition of payload. The capabilities enabled by the same technologies have also been identified for the Future Space Ecosystem: the demonstrated technologies will allow Europe to propose solutions for upgrade, assembly, manufacturing, and repair in space.
The proposed demonstration mission is therefore a condensed version of what has been considered relevant in the market analysis. It is illustrated in the video accessible at the following link :
https://youtu.be/T1mY5OhmTt8(opens in new window). It will demonstrate:
- inspection and surveillance
- satellite lifespan extension by station keeping and refuelling
- change of orbit
- robotic manipulation
- end of life removal
The phase A/B1 activities have allowed to define the high level mission requirements and to identify the consortium of European partners that will be able to bring all the necessary technologies to the relevant maturity level to ensure the launch of the demonstration in 2026.
On the other hand, the project was dedicated to the maturation of several key technologies that had been earlier identified:
- robotic arm and gripper
- robotic visual servoing
- image processing for rendezvous
- guidance, navigation and control for rendezvous
- autonomy management
- software integration
Those technologies have been brought to TRL up to 5 in the project, and have been demonstrated in two dedicated phases at two different facilities:
- demonstration of the rendezvous aspects developed byTASF and GMV on the PlatformArt(r) facility in GMV
- demonstration of the robotic aspects developed by DLR, PIAP Space, TASI and SINTEF at the DLR facility.
The exploitation of the abovementoioned results will be done in the frame of the EROSS IOD project that has been awarded to an extended European Consortium in view of implementing the in-orbit pathfinder mission.
