Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IODISPlay (IOD service mISsions PortfoLio)
Période du rapport: 2015-01-01 au 2016-06-30
Résumé du contexte et des objectifs généraux du projet
In-Orbit demonstration (IOD) and Validation (IOV) is considered one of the main means to boost the competitiveness of space technologies, as it provides flight experience and heritage to new technologies or products, thereby increasing their attractiveness in the market.
Current IOD/IOV possibilities are restricted to either the identification of carriers of opportunity (where IOD/IOV has to fulfil with fixed requirements and interfaces, limited to a top-down approach) or to dedicated missions where a satellite is designed as a compromise among the needs of a number of identified technologies to be demonstrated in orbit. Moreover, often political choices drive the selection of the technologies to be validated in orbit, sometimes at the expenses of more interesting technologies in terms of innovation, time-to-market and future mission or industrial application.
On one hand, this approach strongly limits the maximum available potential of IOD/IOV. On the other hand, current trends in modular satellites, the now dynamic panorama of space launchers and innovative concepts certainly offers new and extended possibilities for IOD/IOV.
This situation has resulted in the so-called TRL (Technology Readiness Level) valley of death, which is related to the fact that many interesting technologies are stuck at mid-TRL levels and cannot get to the market. This is also due to the fact that, along the TRL ladder, the cost of increasing a technology’s maturity is inversely related to the availability of funding.
In this view, IODISPLay has the following objectives:
- To assess current IOD/IOV needs (in terms of current and future European space technologies) and capabilities, as well as current IOD/IOV service market
- To analyse current and future available/existing IOD/IOV carriers concepts and also ad-hoc modifications to enhance the IOD/IOV capabilities of already existing concepts.
- To provide an IOD/IOV missionisation tool (IOD MITO), which can structure all the information on IOD/IOV capabilities and needs within Europe, as well as intuitively checking feasibility and characteristics of IOD/IOV mission configurations.
- To identify a portfolio of IOD/IOV missions and concepts achievable and affordable within H2020 timeframe;
- To identify the scheme for a European IOD/IOV service, which would enable frequent, affordable and predictable in-orbit demonstration opportunities
- To identify a number of IOD mission concepts that will be preliminary designed and that will serve as use cases of the IOD/IOV service
- To prepare and analyse the business plan of an IOD/IOV service, including the need for institutional support
During the project, a substantial amount of data on the technologies that would profit from IOD/IOV, as well as the carriers and launchers that would bring them to orbit, has been obtained and structured in a database. This has once more validated the existence of the “valley of death” of the TRL, as well as a need of shift of paradigm if the situation is to be changed. Based on the information contained in the database, a portfolio of promising IOD mission concepts has been identified
The main result of our study has been that within the current situation most of the identified interesting technologies would not find their way to flight. In order to solve this problem, the concept of an IOD service scheme has been proposed and preliminarily outlined within IODISPLay. This has also been endorsed by the main messages gathered during an IOD workshop organised by the project and held at ESA/ESTEC in November 2015 with all major stakeholders, which highlighted the need of fostering a scheme for providing frequent and ideally self-sustainable access to space.
The scheme foreseen by IODISPLAY is based on a European IOD commercial service, where an entity would act as a single stop shop for all actors interested in an IOD/IOV, as well as subcontract all the main activities needed to implement an IOD mission.
The IOD service objective would be able to provide predictable, frequent and affordable access to space.
The IOD service would also provide IOD intelligence, as well as IOD flight opportunities/investors matchmaking. The target missions for such service would be two: a first type of mission with a main institutional IOD/IOV payload (in the region of 50 Kg), completed by other IOD slots that could be offered commercially; and a second much smaller type of mission (with a total IOD/IOV payload in the range of 10kgs), that would be fully commercial.
The market analysis and a business plan review of the IOD service show that this entity could not be, at present, financially self-sustained. Since the benefits it would bring for the community would be real and would allow changing the current IOD situation, it is proposed that institutions should support the emergence of such IOD service scheme. The objective of the public support would be not only to finance the first steps of an IOD service, but also to stimulate the market so that it could provide commercial income and eventually profitability to the IOD service providers. In this context, a potential way of supporting the emergence of an IOD service through H2020 space resources has been proposed at the end of our study, which includes the implementation of a number of IOD missions as well as the support from an external technical expert like ESA, which would provide high confidence in the outcome of the program.
Current IOD/IOV possibilities are restricted to either the identification of carriers of opportunity (where IOD/IOV has to fulfil with fixed requirements and interfaces, limited to a top-down approach) or to dedicated missions where a satellite is designed as a compromise among the needs of a number of identified technologies to be demonstrated in orbit. Moreover, often political choices drive the selection of the technologies to be validated in orbit, sometimes at the expenses of more interesting technologies in terms of innovation, time-to-market and future mission or industrial application.
On one hand, this approach strongly limits the maximum available potential of IOD/IOV. On the other hand, current trends in modular satellites, the now dynamic panorama of space launchers and innovative concepts certainly offers new and extended possibilities for IOD/IOV.
This situation has resulted in the so-called TRL (Technology Readiness Level) valley of death, which is related to the fact that many interesting technologies are stuck at mid-TRL levels and cannot get to the market. This is also due to the fact that, along the TRL ladder, the cost of increasing a technology’s maturity is inversely related to the availability of funding.
In this view, IODISPLay has the following objectives:
- To assess current IOD/IOV needs (in terms of current and future European space technologies) and capabilities, as well as current IOD/IOV service market
- To analyse current and future available/existing IOD/IOV carriers concepts and also ad-hoc modifications to enhance the IOD/IOV capabilities of already existing concepts.
- To provide an IOD/IOV missionisation tool (IOD MITO), which can structure all the information on IOD/IOV capabilities and needs within Europe, as well as intuitively checking feasibility and characteristics of IOD/IOV mission configurations.
- To identify a portfolio of IOD/IOV missions and concepts achievable and affordable within H2020 timeframe;
- To identify the scheme for a European IOD/IOV service, which would enable frequent, affordable and predictable in-orbit demonstration opportunities
- To identify a number of IOD mission concepts that will be preliminary designed and that will serve as use cases of the IOD/IOV service
- To prepare and analyse the business plan of an IOD/IOV service, including the need for institutional support
During the project, a substantial amount of data on the technologies that would profit from IOD/IOV, as well as the carriers and launchers that would bring them to orbit, has been obtained and structured in a database. This has once more validated the existence of the “valley of death” of the TRL, as well as a need of shift of paradigm if the situation is to be changed. Based on the information contained in the database, a portfolio of promising IOD mission concepts has been identified
The main result of our study has been that within the current situation most of the identified interesting technologies would not find their way to flight. In order to solve this problem, the concept of an IOD service scheme has been proposed and preliminarily outlined within IODISPLay. This has also been endorsed by the main messages gathered during an IOD workshop organised by the project and held at ESA/ESTEC in November 2015 with all major stakeholders, which highlighted the need of fostering a scheme for providing frequent and ideally self-sustainable access to space.
The scheme foreseen by IODISPLAY is based on a European IOD commercial service, where an entity would act as a single stop shop for all actors interested in an IOD/IOV, as well as subcontract all the main activities needed to implement an IOD mission.
The IOD service objective would be able to provide predictable, frequent and affordable access to space.
The IOD service would also provide IOD intelligence, as well as IOD flight opportunities/investors matchmaking. The target missions for such service would be two: a first type of mission with a main institutional IOD/IOV payload (in the region of 50 Kg), completed by other IOD slots that could be offered commercially; and a second much smaller type of mission (with a total IOD/IOV payload in the range of 10kgs), that would be fully commercial.
The market analysis and a business plan review of the IOD service show that this entity could not be, at present, financially self-sustained. Since the benefits it would bring for the community would be real and would allow changing the current IOD situation, it is proposed that institutions should support the emergence of such IOD service scheme. The objective of the public support would be not only to finance the first steps of an IOD service, but also to stimulate the market so that it could provide commercial income and eventually profitability to the IOD service providers. In this context, a potential way of supporting the emergence of an IOD service through H2020 space resources has been proposed at the end of our study, which includes the implementation of a number of IOD missions as well as the support from an external technical expert like ESA, which would provide high confidence in the outcome of the program.
Travail effectué depuis le début du projet jusqu’à la fin de la période considérée dans le rapport et principaux résultats atteints jusqu’à présent
*IOD/IOV capabilities
In order to assess the status of IOD within Europe, the first phase of the project has been devoted to gather information from industries and R&D institutes on past and present IOD initiatives and missions. The collected information have been categorized in three different groups:
- Technologies: which includes all the “IOD/IOV payloads” that need to be demonstrated in orbit
- Carriers: which includes the spacecraft bus (current and proposed) that can give services for demonstrating or validating technologies in orbit
- Launchers: that include launch vectors (current or proposed) capable of delivering IOD missions to space
While the information on platforms and launchers has been mostly gathered through desk research, the team did an extensive active investigation on technologies that could profit from IOD, setting up a scheme (based on emails and 1-to-1 phone calls) which involved technology developers from all over Europe. For each category, specific questionnaires templates have been prepared and filled out.
In our European-wide survey, a total of 154 technology proposals have been suggested for IOD by more than 70 different entities. Fig 1 shows the IOD proposals received per country and per type of organisation, showing a fairly good coverage of European countries and organisations.
Fig 2 depicts the coverage achieved, from the received questionnaires, in terms of Technology Domains defined in ESA’s Technology Tree classification. It has to be noted that some proposed technology can be categorized under more than one Technology Domain (the upper branch of ESA’s Technology Tree). It has to be noted that the type of technologies that has been received has been very diverse: from single subsystem technologies to complete spacecraft subsystems or payloads, going to complex techniques.
Looking at the application of the technologies that have been proposed (Fig 3 depicts the technologies proposed against the ESA’s Service Domains), one can see that most of them are generic ones and therefore applicable to a wide variety of space missions.
A research has been carried out in order to identify carriers that could be applicable to an IOD mission. Our research has focused on satellites up to the Minisat range (below 500kg), and has identified a large number of platforms with a different degree of flight heritage. Among all these platforms, detailed information on their performances and services available to IOD payloads has been gathered for a total of 30 carriers, including also modified upper stages that could offer enough resources for demonstrating/validating payloads in orbit.
Similarly, information on current and future launchers that could be used by an IOD mission has been gathered. These include European Launch Vehicles (Ariane5, Soyuz, VEGA as well as the in-development Ariane6), as well as other interesting launches for small satellites like DNEPR or PSLV. For the selected launch vehicles, the launch manifest up to 2020 has been collected.
All the retrieved information has been structured in a database, which allows browsing and comparing characteristics of the different technologies, such as the requirements that these technologies impose on a carrier for their demonstration in orbit.
The information is stored in tables and then ready by a script that presents to the user html reports. Different technologies can be combined together into “IOD mission configurations”, which also present to the user which carriers are compatible with the selected technologies combinations and the remaining margins. This can be done with the Missionisation Tool (MITO tool), which can help the user to quickly assess the main characteristics (mass, power, pointing accuracy, ROM price) of different IOD mission configurations. Also, the tool suggests additional technologies that may be included in order to use the spare space on the selected carrier for a given IOD mission configuration. Similarly, the applicable launchers (in terms of mass, orbit and fairing dimensions) are suggested to the user.
In addition, the user can give critical assessment of the different technologies in order to have a further evaluation of each technology (in addition to the data contained in the questionnaires) and produce IOD figures of merit for a mission configuration.
This tool has been prepared in order to:
- ease browsing through the IOD database
- create and evaluate IOD mission configurations
- compare different IOD mission configurations
*The IOD/IOV workshop
Organized by IODISPLay in conjunction with the other parallel H2020 IOD projects, the IOD/IOV workshop held in ESA/ESTEC in November 2015 had the following objectives:
- To gather all main IOD European actors around one single table: policy makers, industries, academia, operators, launchers
- To generate a discussion on what are the priorities for IOD
- To present the main current and recent activities related to IOD
- To propose to policy makers guidelines and priorities about future of IOD within H2020
More than 80 people were present at the event: European Commission, ESA, several National Delegations, Coordinators and Partner organisations from the Consortiums of the four H2020 IOD projects (from COMPET-5-2014), and a relevant presence of technology owners, system integrators and launcher developer and providers. The agenda can be found in the IODISPLay website. The offered presentations triggered a discussion on the priorities for IOD within Europe.
The main messages that can summarize the generated discussion are presented here below:
- The initial H2020 IOD objective is to foster a service for providing opportunities of IOD, which can enable frequent and ideally self-sustainable access to space.
- Choice of technologies to be flown will come after the definition of any IOD service (including roles) and will depend on what the Community will propose.
- Investment in critical technologies and non-dependence is needed to boost European competitiveness: the upside is that Europe is investing much more than 7 years ago.
- Return of Investment from IOD (excluding purely commercial technologies) can be achieved by demonstrating complex techniques.
- In order for an IOD to have added value, the user should be identified.
- Commercial IODs (especially telecom) already have their ways for flying, since there is a final commercial customer behind.
- In order to overcome valley of death, the solution cannot rely only on demanding money for IOD to people who don’t have it. Institutional support is needed.
For solving the current IOD situation, the IODISPLay Team proposes that the scheme that should offer affordable, frequent and predictable access to space to technologies should be implemented as a European IOD Service with the following objectives:
- To bring into the IOD Service Business Units a private company (commercial) approach: it means targeting competitiveness (lower prices by competition), making decisions oriented to complying and price-effective solutions, moving cost management from design-to-cost towards target costing with fair margins.
- To stimulate competition in access to space through a politic of procurement and outsourcing (Launch and Carriers) based on negotiations, agreements and pricing; the objective is to bring prices down and open the market.
- To find and open channels for enabling funding mechanisms and interest from investors for supporting technology owners in their road to IOD/IOV
- To provide a virtuous cooperative circle for spreading awareness of needs and opportunities as well as ease finding partnerships and networking between stakeholders and actors.
*Identified IOD/IOV mission concepts
The following table lists the most promising 13 IOD/IOV mission concepts that have been identified in IODISPLay by analysing the IOD database. This has been done taking advantage of the Missionization Tool.
Ideally, this exercise should be done/repeated regularly, as new technologies arise with time.
Note that, while each mission is dedicated to a specific topic, other technologies have also been identified to fly as IOD/IOV companions.
# Mission Name IOD/IOV Concept and Objectives
1 Space-based Debris Observation and Identification The proposed mission aims at providing the required infrastructure for demonstrating different techniques of space based optical observation of space debris (both monitoring and tracking of Earth orbiting objects) together with the on ground infrastructures for data processing. Space based observations are needed to build up ground databases, maintain them and track specific targets. The mission could be a precursor of a European Flagship for SSA and Space Debris Observation.
2 Rendezvous and Capture demonstration mission The proposed IOD mission aims at demonstrating a number of techniques that would enable innovative rendezvous and capture technologies that would be beneficial for active debris removal, in-orbit servicing and Exploration missions. The proposed mission would require an active spacecraft (chaser) hosting the technologies to be demonstrated and a target
3 THz / IR Upper Atmosphere Sounding The mission proposes to demonstrate a low cost upper atmosphere sounder; provide scientific data to be bench-marked against existing atmosphere data sets and provide verification and experience for other future science missions / instrument
4 Small SAR mission The Earth Observation mission aims at demonstrating a new SAR concept oriented to small satellites, and for potential application to formation flying and constellations. Continuous Wave (CW) Radar requires much less power to operate than conventional and widely deployed “pulse” radars; the concept is tightly coupled to a small satellite bus / deployment philosophy.
5 Large Deployable Antenna/reflector The Large Deployable Antenna is a large size payload that would demand a dedicated IOD mission. European non dependence in terms of Large Reflector Technologies has been promoted also by ESA. Usage of the boom and LDA system could be commercial and applicable to a wide range of satellites (including constellation-based services) and applications thanks to its scalability.
6 Electronic-signals Intelligence An ELINT (ELectronic-signals INTelligence) mission based on the Frequency Monitoring Payload could be a dedicated mission or a hosted payload on a small satellite.The technology could be of interest for ITU compliance and protection of space assets from ground based radio frequency interferences, even for GEO. It could be of interest for cybersecurity topics: potential customers could be the governments and defence organisations from EC countries.
7 GTO IOD Mission This mission concept aims at putting on a GTO orbit a platform carrying a set of IODs that could benefit from a recurrent passage through the Van Allen Belts with long lasting exposure to radiation environment. The mission can be of particular interest for studying effect of radiation on the electronics and correlating them to occurrence of errors. Moreover the mission can be suitable for testing novel error detection methods as well as self-healing hardware.
8 GNSS Reflectometry A dedicated mission to demonstrate techniques and technologies related to GNSS reflectometry could be of high interest for institutions and for the potential applications for the community. The promotion of the technology is important for gaining competitiveness wrt similar USA an NASA programmes.
9 ISS experiment ISS in the frame of IOD/IOV can be considered for hosting an experiment to be performed on-board the Station with collaboration of astronauts (in the inner volume or exposed outside the station)
10 Electric Propulsion On-Orbit Test Bench The idea is to develop a (or adapt an existing) carrier designed to host, on recursive base, with successive launches, innovative Electric Propulsion systems or components/parts of them needing in-orbit demonstration/validation as main IOD payload. The baseline carrier should be provided with a flexible/modular power generation system to be tailored on the basis of the power needs from the Electric System (modular solar arrays configuration, modular battery/accumulation system).
11 Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Hyperspectral instruments are missing elements in Europe. Thus a gap should be filled once PROBA-1 mission will end is life. The main interest in demonstrating this technology could be institutional (ESA, EC with Copernicus programme). The services and applications potentially enabled by these technologies can be commercial: agriculture (crop monitoring), ocean monitoring (contamination), mining (surface analysis) and disaster management (analysis of natural or unnatural disasters) aside from potential scientific applications
12 VEGA as IOD carrier Usage of VEGA modified payload adapter for conducting experiments. Maximum exploitation of a European launch vehicle like VEGA for IOD purposes would be desirable both for institution, launcher developer and provider as well as for technology owners.
13 GEO Hosted Payload IOD The main objective of an IOD in GEO can be the demonstration of telecommunications related technologies. The demonstration could take place at different level of integration in the hosting spacecraft system.
*IOD service market analysis
Within IODISPLay, it has been explored the possibility that the identified IOD schemes to be implemented within H2020 can be the first step of a commercial IOD service. In this context, a market survey for an IOD service has been carried out.
Up to now, there is a mismatch between demand and offer of IOD opportunities, both in terms of number of such opportunities vis-à-vis the level of demand and in terms of the required budget of IOD activities vis-à-vis the availability to pay by technology developers.
While institutional missions and “hosted payload” approaches provide specific opportunities, and so are also doing Cubesats for small technologies, at the time being there is no such thing as a commercial service dedicated to demonstrating technologies in-orbit.
The demand for IOD is composed by technology suppliers in the manufacturing sector, which can be grouped in two main categories: private companies and research organisations, though the vast majority of the needs arise from the companies. The need for IOD is expressed for systems, equipment and components.
The entities representing the potential demand for IOD services obviously share the same characteristics of the overall EU space industry, composed of a small number of very large system integrators and a large number of smaller companies.
Aside the obvious differences in terms of available resources and scale of the activities between these two categories of players, there are also differences in the average financial outlook, whit small companies tending to be under pressure, recording low, zero or negative profitability.
As mentioned above, the companies contacted within the project expressed a strong interest in IOD. After removing outliers, the average budget foreseen as necessary for IOD has been indicated to be around 720 thousand EUR.
Further analysis, carried out through in-depth interviews with selected technology developers, revealed that companies that are not system integrators often develop their products and components up to a certain stage, and then wait for opportunities to materialize in order to finalise the progression of TRL. Reasons behind are many:
- Some technologies are driven by institutional needs rather than by commercial objectives. In this case, an institutional player requires the technology and funds its development through contracting. Thus, technology developers focus on achieving the TRL steps required in the contract and expect the institutional player to fund the IOD activity, if and when they deem necessary;
- Some technologies are components meant
to be tested as a part of a whole system. In this case, it is the system integrator, not the technology developer that will move to the IOD activity, only after finalising the development of the system;
- Some technologies have a commercial potential but the technology developer does not have the partially or fully the necessary budget for IOD – which is due to a combination of: the overall low profitability figures of medium and small space companies and the lack of IOD opportunities, which generates a “chicken and egg” issue: companies do not set aside budget for IOD activities within the overall resources for technology development because they are not confident they will identify opportunities.
Developing an IOD service is particularly important to solve this third issue. Some technologies might have a high commercial potential which remains tapped.
An IOD service is therefore is expected to be able to:
- Provide a cost-effective opportunity for technology developers which are currently missing opportunities for IOD; and
- Solve the “market failure” faced by developers of technologies with promising commercial potential, which are stopped by the lack of IOD budget.
Dedicated in-depth interviews with selected technology developers revealed that, in the presence of such a service, these companies would be able to pay, with the rough order of magnitude of their willingness to pay being 200,000 EUR /Kg.
*IOD service proposal
As the identified solution to the current IOD/IOV situation in Europe, the IODISPLay team has designed an IOD service which acts as an intermediary between the IOD clients and the providers of the basic IOD services. The IOD service provider would offer both IOD strategy services (matchmaking, intelligence, database maintenance...) as well as the implementation of IOD missions. The basic scheme is reported here below in figure.
In Fig 4, the IOD service provider can be seen at the centre, with the main elements offered within the red block. On the left side, all the building blocks needed by the service provider to implement one IOD mission, which will be procured commercially (or in a buy vs make decision, depending on the capabilities of the service provider). On the right side, the clients that would use the services of the IOD provider.
The IOD service provider will help solving the current European IOD situation by providing IOD opportunities that are:
- Predictable, allowing planning and set aside IOD resources in the development roadmap of a new technology;
- Frequent, maximising opportunities for flying technologies (1-2 per year as goal)
- Affordable, as limited resources impose that an IOD service can become a reality only if available at low cost
The IOD service is intended to be offered to three different customer segments, each one with its specific needs and expectations:
- Technology Owners / Developers: their main needs are related to the improvement and validation of their technologies. It is important to underline that this segment contains players with very different goals, as well as availability and willingness to pay.
- Public Institutions: public institutions are mainly interested in increasing the competitiveness of European technologies and in effectively addressing public investments.
- System Integrators (carrier and launcher developers): they are mainly interested in finding technologies that can complete/integrate their systems or lower their costs, or sharing their mission costs;
- Launcher Providers / Satcom Operators: their main goal is to share a mission’s costs.
The new entity would be organized in two different business units:
BU 1: The IOD Strategy Office, whose goal is to be a “one-stop shop” for the clients – both public and private – needing support in all the activities prior to the implementation of a mission, including the access to funding. The offered services are:
- IOD technology intelligence: Consists in the overview and assessment of technologies status, and provision and update of TRL/IOD status of technologies to public institutions.
- Matchmaking of IOD opportunities Consists in the identification and matching of technologies/actors for specific IOD or technology needs, providing awareness and organizing matching of flight opportunities.
- Matchmaking of investment opportunities Consists in the identification of potential private investors interested in supporting the development of a specific technology or IOD Mission
BU 2: The IOD Service Implementation Office, whose goal is to support the clients in all the activities related to the implementation of a mission, starting from the analysis of feasibility. The offered services are:
- Feasibility studies: Carry out studies to assess the feasibility of an IOD mission (either as dedicated or as a hosted payload), in order to present a programmatic dossier that includes the main mission performances and characteristics, its schedule and costs.
- Implementation of full IOD mission: Implementation of full IOD mission in a scheme that can guarantee regular and predictable access to space, through the following activities (either subcontracted or carried out internally, depending on the most competitive alternative): system engineering; launch opportunity procurement; technologies selection; platform sourcing; system assembly integration and testing; ground segment and operations services; overall mission management and funnel of different funding sources
It is important to underline that the business units can be operational within a different time frame. Additionally, an IOD board composed by all main stakeholders (including institutions that could monitor the use of any public funding and ensure successful implementation) will steer the service strategy.
Finally, transversal to both business units an IOD steering board will also be part of the IOD service, composed by institutions (EC, ESA, EDA and national delegates) and industry representatives. The board will profit from the intelligence generated by the IOD office and coordinate a European-wide IOD policy by helping set the priorities for IOD missions and influence the decision on the payloads to be flown under institutional support (i.e. while not overstepping in the commercial activities of the IOD service provider). The board will also monitor any potential conflict of interest and market abuse from the IOD service provider.
In order to assess the status of IOD within Europe, the first phase of the project has been devoted to gather information from industries and R&D institutes on past and present IOD initiatives and missions. The collected information have been categorized in three different groups:
- Technologies: which includes all the “IOD/IOV payloads” that need to be demonstrated in orbit
- Carriers: which includes the spacecraft bus (current and proposed) that can give services for demonstrating or validating technologies in orbit
- Launchers: that include launch vectors (current or proposed) capable of delivering IOD missions to space
While the information on platforms and launchers has been mostly gathered through desk research, the team did an extensive active investigation on technologies that could profit from IOD, setting up a scheme (based on emails and 1-to-1 phone calls) which involved technology developers from all over Europe. For each category, specific questionnaires templates have been prepared and filled out.
In our European-wide survey, a total of 154 technology proposals have been suggested for IOD by more than 70 different entities. Fig 1 shows the IOD proposals received per country and per type of organisation, showing a fairly good coverage of European countries and organisations.
Fig 2 depicts the coverage achieved, from the received questionnaires, in terms of Technology Domains defined in ESA’s Technology Tree classification. It has to be noted that some proposed technology can be categorized under more than one Technology Domain (the upper branch of ESA’s Technology Tree). It has to be noted that the type of technologies that has been received has been very diverse: from single subsystem technologies to complete spacecraft subsystems or payloads, going to complex techniques.
Looking at the application of the technologies that have been proposed (Fig 3 depicts the technologies proposed against the ESA’s Service Domains), one can see that most of them are generic ones and therefore applicable to a wide variety of space missions.
A research has been carried out in order to identify carriers that could be applicable to an IOD mission. Our research has focused on satellites up to the Minisat range (below 500kg), and has identified a large number of platforms with a different degree of flight heritage. Among all these platforms, detailed information on their performances and services available to IOD payloads has been gathered for a total of 30 carriers, including also modified upper stages that could offer enough resources for demonstrating/validating payloads in orbit.
Similarly, information on current and future launchers that could be used by an IOD mission has been gathered. These include European Launch Vehicles (Ariane5, Soyuz, VEGA as well as the in-development Ariane6), as well as other interesting launches for small satellites like DNEPR or PSLV. For the selected launch vehicles, the launch manifest up to 2020 has been collected.
All the retrieved information has been structured in a database, which allows browsing and comparing characteristics of the different technologies, such as the requirements that these technologies impose on a carrier for their demonstration in orbit.
The information is stored in tables and then ready by a script that presents to the user html reports. Different technologies can be combined together into “IOD mission configurations”, which also present to the user which carriers are compatible with the selected technologies combinations and the remaining margins. This can be done with the Missionisation Tool (MITO tool), which can help the user to quickly assess the main characteristics (mass, power, pointing accuracy, ROM price) of different IOD mission configurations. Also, the tool suggests additional technologies that may be included in order to use the spare space on the selected carrier for a given IOD mission configuration. Similarly, the applicable launchers (in terms of mass, orbit and fairing dimensions) are suggested to the user.
In addition, the user can give critical assessment of the different technologies in order to have a further evaluation of each technology (in addition to the data contained in the questionnaires) and produce IOD figures of merit for a mission configuration.
This tool has been prepared in order to:
- ease browsing through the IOD database
- create and evaluate IOD mission configurations
- compare different IOD mission configurations
*The IOD/IOV workshop
Organized by IODISPLay in conjunction with the other parallel H2020 IOD projects, the IOD/IOV workshop held in ESA/ESTEC in November 2015 had the following objectives:
- To gather all main IOD European actors around one single table: policy makers, industries, academia, operators, launchers
- To generate a discussion on what are the priorities for IOD
- To present the main current and recent activities related to IOD
- To propose to policy makers guidelines and priorities about future of IOD within H2020
More than 80 people were present at the event: European Commission, ESA, several National Delegations, Coordinators and Partner organisations from the Consortiums of the four H2020 IOD projects (from COMPET-5-2014), and a relevant presence of technology owners, system integrators and launcher developer and providers. The agenda can be found in the IODISPLay website. The offered presentations triggered a discussion on the priorities for IOD within Europe.
The main messages that can summarize the generated discussion are presented here below:
- The initial H2020 IOD objective is to foster a service for providing opportunities of IOD, which can enable frequent and ideally self-sustainable access to space.
- Choice of technologies to be flown will come after the definition of any IOD service (including roles) and will depend on what the Community will propose.
- Investment in critical technologies and non-dependence is needed to boost European competitiveness: the upside is that Europe is investing much more than 7 years ago.
- Return of Investment from IOD (excluding purely commercial technologies) can be achieved by demonstrating complex techniques.
- In order for an IOD to have added value, the user should be identified.
- Commercial IODs (especially telecom) already have their ways for flying, since there is a final commercial customer behind.
- In order to overcome valley of death, the solution cannot rely only on demanding money for IOD to people who don’t have it. Institutional support is needed.
For solving the current IOD situation, the IODISPLay Team proposes that the scheme that should offer affordable, frequent and predictable access to space to technologies should be implemented as a European IOD Service with the following objectives:
- To bring into the IOD Service Business Units a private company (commercial) approach: it means targeting competitiveness (lower prices by competition), making decisions oriented to complying and price-effective solutions, moving cost management from design-to-cost towards target costing with fair margins.
- To stimulate competition in access to space through a politic of procurement and outsourcing (Launch and Carriers) based on negotiations, agreements and pricing; the objective is to bring prices down and open the market.
- To find and open channels for enabling funding mechanisms and interest from investors for supporting technology owners in their road to IOD/IOV
- To provide a virtuous cooperative circle for spreading awareness of needs and opportunities as well as ease finding partnerships and networking between stakeholders and actors.
*Identified IOD/IOV mission concepts
The following table lists the most promising 13 IOD/IOV mission concepts that have been identified in IODISPLay by analysing the IOD database. This has been done taking advantage of the Missionization Tool.
Ideally, this exercise should be done/repeated regularly, as new technologies arise with time.
Note that, while each mission is dedicated to a specific topic, other technologies have also been identified to fly as IOD/IOV companions.
# Mission Name IOD/IOV Concept and Objectives
1 Space-based Debris Observation and Identification The proposed mission aims at providing the required infrastructure for demonstrating different techniques of space based optical observation of space debris (both monitoring and tracking of Earth orbiting objects) together with the on ground infrastructures for data processing. Space based observations are needed to build up ground databases, maintain them and track specific targets. The mission could be a precursor of a European Flagship for SSA and Space Debris Observation.
2 Rendezvous and Capture demonstration mission The proposed IOD mission aims at demonstrating a number of techniques that would enable innovative rendezvous and capture technologies that would be beneficial for active debris removal, in-orbit servicing and Exploration missions. The proposed mission would require an active spacecraft (chaser) hosting the technologies to be demonstrated and a target
3 THz / IR Upper Atmosphere Sounding The mission proposes to demonstrate a low cost upper atmosphere sounder; provide scientific data to be bench-marked against existing atmosphere data sets and provide verification and experience for other future science missions / instrument
4 Small SAR mission The Earth Observation mission aims at demonstrating a new SAR concept oriented to small satellites, and for potential application to formation flying and constellations. Continuous Wave (CW) Radar requires much less power to operate than conventional and widely deployed “pulse” radars; the concept is tightly coupled to a small satellite bus / deployment philosophy.
5 Large Deployable Antenna/reflector The Large Deployable Antenna is a large size payload that would demand a dedicated IOD mission. European non dependence in terms of Large Reflector Technologies has been promoted also by ESA. Usage of the boom and LDA system could be commercial and applicable to a wide range of satellites (including constellation-based services) and applications thanks to its scalability.
6 Electronic-signals Intelligence An ELINT (ELectronic-signals INTelligence) mission based on the Frequency Monitoring Payload could be a dedicated mission or a hosted payload on a small satellite.The technology could be of interest for ITU compliance and protection of space assets from ground based radio frequency interferences, even for GEO. It could be of interest for cybersecurity topics: potential customers could be the governments and defence organisations from EC countries.
7 GTO IOD Mission This mission concept aims at putting on a GTO orbit a platform carrying a set of IODs that could benefit from a recurrent passage through the Van Allen Belts with long lasting exposure to radiation environment. The mission can be of particular interest for studying effect of radiation on the electronics and correlating them to occurrence of errors. Moreover the mission can be suitable for testing novel error detection methods as well as self-healing hardware.
8 GNSS Reflectometry A dedicated mission to demonstrate techniques and technologies related to GNSS reflectometry could be of high interest for institutions and for the potential applications for the community. The promotion of the technology is important for gaining competitiveness wrt similar USA an NASA programmes.
9 ISS experiment ISS in the frame of IOD/IOV can be considered for hosting an experiment to be performed on-board the Station with collaboration of astronauts (in the inner volume or exposed outside the station)
10 Electric Propulsion On-Orbit Test Bench The idea is to develop a (or adapt an existing) carrier designed to host, on recursive base, with successive launches, innovative Electric Propulsion systems or components/parts of them needing in-orbit demonstration/validation as main IOD payload. The baseline carrier should be provided with a flexible/modular power generation system to be tailored on the basis of the power needs from the Electric System (modular solar arrays configuration, modular battery/accumulation system).
11 Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Hyperspectral instruments are missing elements in Europe. Thus a gap should be filled once PROBA-1 mission will end is life. The main interest in demonstrating this technology could be institutional (ESA, EC with Copernicus programme). The services and applications potentially enabled by these technologies can be commercial: agriculture (crop monitoring), ocean monitoring (contamination), mining (surface analysis) and disaster management (analysis of natural or unnatural disasters) aside from potential scientific applications
12 VEGA as IOD carrier Usage of VEGA modified payload adapter for conducting experiments. Maximum exploitation of a European launch vehicle like VEGA for IOD purposes would be desirable both for institution, launcher developer and provider as well as for technology owners.
13 GEO Hosted Payload IOD The main objective of an IOD in GEO can be the demonstration of telecommunications related technologies. The demonstration could take place at different level of integration in the hosting spacecraft system.
*IOD service market analysis
Within IODISPLay, it has been explored the possibility that the identified IOD schemes to be implemented within H2020 can be the first step of a commercial IOD service. In this context, a market survey for an IOD service has been carried out.
Up to now, there is a mismatch between demand and offer of IOD opportunities, both in terms of number of such opportunities vis-à-vis the level of demand and in terms of the required budget of IOD activities vis-à-vis the availability to pay by technology developers.
While institutional missions and “hosted payload” approaches provide specific opportunities, and so are also doing Cubesats for small technologies, at the time being there is no such thing as a commercial service dedicated to demonstrating technologies in-orbit.
The demand for IOD is composed by technology suppliers in the manufacturing sector, which can be grouped in two main categories: private companies and research organisations, though the vast majority of the needs arise from the companies. The need for IOD is expressed for systems, equipment and components.
The entities representing the potential demand for IOD services obviously share the same characteristics of the overall EU space industry, composed of a small number of very large system integrators and a large number of smaller companies.
Aside the obvious differences in terms of available resources and scale of the activities between these two categories of players, there are also differences in the average financial outlook, whit small companies tending to be under pressure, recording low, zero or negative profitability.
As mentioned above, the companies contacted within the project expressed a strong interest in IOD. After removing outliers, the average budget foreseen as necessary for IOD has been indicated to be around 720 thousand EUR.
Further analysis, carried out through in-depth interviews with selected technology developers, revealed that companies that are not system integrators often develop their products and components up to a certain stage, and then wait for opportunities to materialize in order to finalise the progression of TRL. Reasons behind are many:
- Some technologies are driven by institutional needs rather than by commercial objectives. In this case, an institutional player requires the technology and funds its development through contracting. Thus, technology developers focus on achieving the TRL steps required in the contract and expect the institutional player to fund the IOD activity, if and when they deem necessary;
- Some technologies are components meant
to be tested as a part of a whole system. In this case, it is the system integrator, not the technology developer that will move to the IOD activity, only after finalising the development of the system;
- Some technologies have a commercial potential but the technology developer does not have the partially or fully the necessary budget for IOD – which is due to a combination of: the overall low profitability figures of medium and small space companies and the lack of IOD opportunities, which generates a “chicken and egg” issue: companies do not set aside budget for IOD activities within the overall resources for technology development because they are not confident they will identify opportunities.
Developing an IOD service is particularly important to solve this third issue. Some technologies might have a high commercial potential which remains tapped.
An IOD service is therefore is expected to be able to:
- Provide a cost-effective opportunity for technology developers which are currently missing opportunities for IOD; and
- Solve the “market failure” faced by developers of technologies with promising commercial potential, which are stopped by the lack of IOD budget.
Dedicated in-depth interviews with selected technology developers revealed that, in the presence of such a service, these companies would be able to pay, with the rough order of magnitude of their willingness to pay being 200,000 EUR /Kg.
*IOD service proposal
As the identified solution to the current IOD/IOV situation in Europe, the IODISPLay team has designed an IOD service which acts as an intermediary between the IOD clients and the providers of the basic IOD services. The IOD service provider would offer both IOD strategy services (matchmaking, intelligence, database maintenance...) as well as the implementation of IOD missions. The basic scheme is reported here below in figure.
In Fig 4, the IOD service provider can be seen at the centre, with the main elements offered within the red block. On the left side, all the building blocks needed by the service provider to implement one IOD mission, which will be procured commercially (or in a buy vs make decision, depending on the capabilities of the service provider). On the right side, the clients that would use the services of the IOD provider.
The IOD service provider will help solving the current European IOD situation by providing IOD opportunities that are:
- Predictable, allowing planning and set aside IOD resources in the development roadmap of a new technology;
- Frequent, maximising opportunities for flying technologies (1-2 per year as goal)
- Affordable, as limited resources impose that an IOD service can become a reality only if available at low cost
The IOD service is intended to be offered to three different customer segments, each one with its specific needs and expectations:
- Technology Owners / Developers: their main needs are related to the improvement and validation of their technologies. It is important to underline that this segment contains players with very different goals, as well as availability and willingness to pay.
- Public Institutions: public institutions are mainly interested in increasing the competitiveness of European technologies and in effectively addressing public investments.
- System Integrators (carrier and launcher developers): they are mainly interested in finding technologies that can complete/integrate their systems or lower their costs, or sharing their mission costs;
- Launcher Providers / Satcom Operators: their main goal is to share a mission’s costs.
The new entity would be organized in two different business units:
BU 1: The IOD Strategy Office, whose goal is to be a “one-stop shop” for the clients – both public and private – needing support in all the activities prior to the implementation of a mission, including the access to funding. The offered services are:
- IOD technology intelligence: Consists in the overview and assessment of technologies status, and provision and update of TRL/IOD status of technologies to public institutions.
- Matchmaking of IOD opportunities Consists in the identification and matching of technologies/actors for specific IOD or technology needs, providing awareness and organizing matching of flight opportunities.
- Matchmaking of investment opportunities Consists in the identification of potential private investors interested in supporting the development of a specific technology or IOD Mission
BU 2: The IOD Service Implementation Office, whose goal is to support the clients in all the activities related to the implementation of a mission, starting from the analysis of feasibility. The offered services are:
- Feasibility studies: Carry out studies to assess the feasibility of an IOD mission (either as dedicated or as a hosted payload), in order to present a programmatic dossier that includes the main mission performances and characteristics, its schedule and costs.
- Implementation of full IOD mission: Implementation of full IOD mission in a scheme that can guarantee regular and predictable access to space, through the following activities (either subcontracted or carried out internally, depending on the most competitive alternative): system engineering; launch opportunity procurement; technologies selection; platform sourcing; system assembly integration and testing; ground segment and operations services; overall mission management and funnel of different funding sources
It is important to underline that the business units can be operational within a different time frame. Additionally, an IOD board composed by all main stakeholders (including institutions that could monitor the use of any public funding and ensure successful implementation) will steer the service strategy.
Finally, transversal to both business units an IOD steering board will also be part of the IOD service, composed by institutions (EC, ESA, EDA and national delegates) and industry representatives. The board will profit from the intelligence generated by the IOD office and coordinate a European-wide IOD policy by helping set the priorities for IOD missions and influence the decision on the payloads to be flown under institutional support (i.e. while not overstepping in the commercial activities of the IOD service provider). The board will also monitor any potential conflict of interest and market abuse from the IOD service provider.
Progrès au-delà de l’état des connaissances et impact potentiel prévu (y compris l’impact socio-économique et les conséquences sociétales plus larges du projet jusqu’à présent)
Some IOD initiatives (mainly institutional) have already tried to go in the direction of organizing an IOD service. The German TET-1 mission has been funded by the DLR’s On-Orbit Verification programme (launched in 2012). The initial idea of this mission is that it would initiate a program with recurrent IOD missions based on the TET platform. The second TET mission however did not obtain funding from DLR (TET-2 has been studied up to phase B): currently a fully financed mission is not foreseen by DLR. Similarly, UK’s TechDemoSat (TDS, launched in 2014) initiative resulted into a single shot IOD mission.
Now DLR and UKSA are joining forces with the bi-lateral EuroIOD common initiative, with Phase A studies funded through ESA’s GSTP program. The initiative, presented at the IOD workshop, aims at bringing together the experience in TET and TDS, especially of the integrators OHB/AstroFein (TET) and SSTL (TDS). The initiative foresees one IOD mission every two year, with a payload selection competition running in parallel with the mission definition.
ESA’s Technology Flight Opportunities (under GSTP element 3) have the objective of matching payloads with satellites that offer spare room to host them. ESA acts as a middleman and provides the database that links the two parties (payload and carrier), as well as potentially financing the cost of the payload through GSTP programs. Also, ESA has a track record of successful IOD PROBA missions, implemented under full institutional funding (through GSTP programme). These missions do not have, however, the intention of being initiators or part of a service.
More recently, the Spanish SME TestInSpace has launched an initiative where IOD is possible on-board of 3U cubesat platforms, supported by a grant for the H2020 SME initiative phase 1. ESA is also now leaning towards the use of cubesats for performing IOD missions, such as the case of the GOMX-3 mission. Similarly, the UK’s Space Applications Catapult has recently started an initiative for IOD using cubesats, to be deployed from the ISS.
Some generic considerations can be done about the characteristics of these mentioned past and on-going experiences:
- In the recent years the IOD problem has been tackled under multiple and different schemes
- None of those have had or has up to date a clear commercial objective or is underlying a successful service scheme
- The TET and TDS platforms are both in the range of 120/150 kg (with around 50kg of payload), which may result in relatively high costs. Same is for PROBA missions. Focusing the service on smaller platforms could potentially lower the costs and make the price for commercial customers more appealing, though the need for large (institutional) payloads still exists
- Some of them have been deployed only at national level, without exploiting the potential of a European-wide market
- The institutional effort is thus required to setting up an IOD service scheme
The IOD scheme proposed in IODISPLay aims at going beyond the state of the art, providing clear benefits to the European space arena, offering IOD opportunities that will be:
- Predictable, allowing planning and set aside IOD resources in the development roadmap of a new technology;
- Frequent, maximising opportunities for flying technologies (1-2 per year as goal)
- Affordable, as limited resources impose that an IOD service can become a reality only if available at low cost, justifying investment in demonstration flights from technology developers
The potential impact of our study is to contribute to the emergence of such IOD service. This could be done also through H2020 support, which can take form in the following ways:
- Ensuring an anchoring client to the IOD service, such as being the client for the IOD office and profit from its services
- Offer in-kind elements to the implementation of the IOD missions such as, for instance, the provision of a European launcher
- Providing financial support to the setup of the IOD service such as financing the implementation of pilot missions
The financial support of the H2020 to the IOD service will have the goals of ensuring that the elements provided by the IOD service can be implemented and of stimulating the commercial market in order to aim at the financial self-sustainability of the IOD service, culminating H2020 efforts in solving the IOD situation.
Hence, the financial support should phase out with the time, as the IOD service relies more and more on commercial and private customers. This could be implemented by having a number of mission supported by H2020 with decreasing financial support, with at the same time an expected increase of the commercial payloads in these missions (while not excluding that the commission will be a customer of the IOD service itself). In such a way, the EC could also have the possibility to oversee how the IOD service is performing and if the market is being stimulated enough to enable the commercial viability of the service. In case this does not materialise, then the EC could limit or stop the financial support to the service, with the remaining result that a number of IOD technologies have anyway been flown and demonstrated in orbit. Moreover, the EC support would provide high visibility to the EC service initiative and therefore higher probability of market penetration.
Also, financing IOD missions through the IOD service would be an opportunity to select, among the technologies to be flown, elements that have been developed under the FP7/H2020 scheme and that have not yet had the opportunity to be demonstrated in orbit. The IOD payload selection, or the thematic of the IOD mission(s) to be implemented, could also be open to other themes such as supporting upcoming newspace applications by demonstrating enabling technologies, or further foster the European non-dependence effort already done at EC-ESA-EDA level by demonstrating critical technologies in orbit.
It is expected that the EC financial support could be given under H2020 competitiveness rules under a series of grants, either as Research and Innovation actions or Innovation Actions, depending on the level of funding required. This will ensure fair competition and potentially the emergence of more than one service provider.
As evidenced by the business plan of the IOD service carried out in the IODISPLay study, financing an institutional IOD mission could require a support from H2020 in the order of 25 M Euros in total: this can be considered substantially higher than typical H2020 space grants. Also, in FP7/H2020 activities which had in their program to have an IOD, sometimes had difficulties of actually performing it, thereby coming short in their initial objectives. This could be solved by having a technical supervision and support of the implementation of an IOD mission under H2020 umbrella by an external entity such as the European Space Agency.
An example of how the IOD service could be supported by H2020 would start with the creation of the IOD office, thereby preparing the basic infrastructure for a European IOD service. The IOD office, acting as a one stop shop for IOD activities, would also manage the subcontracting activities that will be carried out to implement IOD missions with H2020 financing. In order to avoid conflict of interests, the IOD office constituents will not be allowed to bid for the subcontracted activities, which will be amount to most of the institutional financing. At the same time, the ESA technical overview should start, in order to support the implementation of the missions.
In the following work programs a number of missions could be initiated, with a mix of institutional IOD missions (with IOD payload in the region of 50 Kg) and smaller IOD missions (with IOD payload below 10 Kg to be sold potentially in the commercial market).
It is expected that, for the IOD institutional missions, the support should decrease gradually, as with time IOD tickets will be sold around a central payload. It is assumed that the first institutional IOD mission will be financed in full by the institutions. For small IOD missions, an initial support from the institutions would be needed in addition to the costs covered by IOD tickets sold to commercial clients. In this case, the objective is to go towards a fully commercially funded small mission.
Both types of mission would rely on a launch opportunity provided by the EC, as well as being overseen technically by ESA. The IOD office would enable having coherence among all the missions, as well as providing additional services (IOD intelligence, IOD opportunities matchmaking and investors matchmaking).
The roadmap also offers the possibility, after the initial years, to evaluate if the market is responding to the public procurement of an IOD service and in the effect on the community of the missions that have been implemented until then. In addition, upon the completion of this phase and of the first missions, the institutions will be able to assess the benefits of performing IOD with this type of scheme.
Concerning the H2020 financial support for fostering the IOD service emergence, based on the carried out estimations the following can be assumed:
- the IOD strategy office would require around 350-400 thousand Euros per year of EC contribution. Said amount represents the revenues of the IOD technology intelligence business unit within the assumed long term procurement agreement;
- an institutional IOD mission could be implemented with around 22M Euros of total EC contribution, provided over a 3 years’ timeframe, under the assumption of full funding of missions costs and contribution in kind of the launcher;
- a small IOD mission could be implemented with around 2M Euros of EC contribution over a 2 years’ timeframe, under the assumption of 50% funding of the costs of the first mission, with contribution in kind of the launcher, and no funding from the third mission onwards
These values are expected to decrease (up to 20/30% after the first missions or IOD service operations).
Now DLR and UKSA are joining forces with the bi-lateral EuroIOD common initiative, with Phase A studies funded through ESA’s GSTP program. The initiative, presented at the IOD workshop, aims at bringing together the experience in TET and TDS, especially of the integrators OHB/AstroFein (TET) and SSTL (TDS). The initiative foresees one IOD mission every two year, with a payload selection competition running in parallel with the mission definition.
ESA’s Technology Flight Opportunities (under GSTP element 3) have the objective of matching payloads with satellites that offer spare room to host them. ESA acts as a middleman and provides the database that links the two parties (payload and carrier), as well as potentially financing the cost of the payload through GSTP programs. Also, ESA has a track record of successful IOD PROBA missions, implemented under full institutional funding (through GSTP programme). These missions do not have, however, the intention of being initiators or part of a service.
More recently, the Spanish SME TestInSpace has launched an initiative where IOD is possible on-board of 3U cubesat platforms, supported by a grant for the H2020 SME initiative phase 1. ESA is also now leaning towards the use of cubesats for performing IOD missions, such as the case of the GOMX-3 mission. Similarly, the UK’s Space Applications Catapult has recently started an initiative for IOD using cubesats, to be deployed from the ISS.
Some generic considerations can be done about the characteristics of these mentioned past and on-going experiences:
- In the recent years the IOD problem has been tackled under multiple and different schemes
- None of those have had or has up to date a clear commercial objective or is underlying a successful service scheme
- The TET and TDS platforms are both in the range of 120/150 kg (with around 50kg of payload), which may result in relatively high costs. Same is for PROBA missions. Focusing the service on smaller platforms could potentially lower the costs and make the price for commercial customers more appealing, though the need for large (institutional) payloads still exists
- Some of them have been deployed only at national level, without exploiting the potential of a European-wide market
- The institutional effort is thus required to setting up an IOD service scheme
The IOD scheme proposed in IODISPLay aims at going beyond the state of the art, providing clear benefits to the European space arena, offering IOD opportunities that will be:
- Predictable, allowing planning and set aside IOD resources in the development roadmap of a new technology;
- Frequent, maximising opportunities for flying technologies (1-2 per year as goal)
- Affordable, as limited resources impose that an IOD service can become a reality only if available at low cost, justifying investment in demonstration flights from technology developers
The potential impact of our study is to contribute to the emergence of such IOD service. This could be done also through H2020 support, which can take form in the following ways:
- Ensuring an anchoring client to the IOD service, such as being the client for the IOD office and profit from its services
- Offer in-kind elements to the implementation of the IOD missions such as, for instance, the provision of a European launcher
- Providing financial support to the setup of the IOD service such as financing the implementation of pilot missions
The financial support of the H2020 to the IOD service will have the goals of ensuring that the elements provided by the IOD service can be implemented and of stimulating the commercial market in order to aim at the financial self-sustainability of the IOD service, culminating H2020 efforts in solving the IOD situation.
Hence, the financial support should phase out with the time, as the IOD service relies more and more on commercial and private customers. This could be implemented by having a number of mission supported by H2020 with decreasing financial support, with at the same time an expected increase of the commercial payloads in these missions (while not excluding that the commission will be a customer of the IOD service itself). In such a way, the EC could also have the possibility to oversee how the IOD service is performing and if the market is being stimulated enough to enable the commercial viability of the service. In case this does not materialise, then the EC could limit or stop the financial support to the service, with the remaining result that a number of IOD technologies have anyway been flown and demonstrated in orbit. Moreover, the EC support would provide high visibility to the EC service initiative and therefore higher probability of market penetration.
Also, financing IOD missions through the IOD service would be an opportunity to select, among the technologies to be flown, elements that have been developed under the FP7/H2020 scheme and that have not yet had the opportunity to be demonstrated in orbit. The IOD payload selection, or the thematic of the IOD mission(s) to be implemented, could also be open to other themes such as supporting upcoming newspace applications by demonstrating enabling technologies, or further foster the European non-dependence effort already done at EC-ESA-EDA level by demonstrating critical technologies in orbit.
It is expected that the EC financial support could be given under H2020 competitiveness rules under a series of grants, either as Research and Innovation actions or Innovation Actions, depending on the level of funding required. This will ensure fair competition and potentially the emergence of more than one service provider.
As evidenced by the business plan of the IOD service carried out in the IODISPLay study, financing an institutional IOD mission could require a support from H2020 in the order of 25 M Euros in total: this can be considered substantially higher than typical H2020 space grants. Also, in FP7/H2020 activities which had in their program to have an IOD, sometimes had difficulties of actually performing it, thereby coming short in their initial objectives. This could be solved by having a technical supervision and support of the implementation of an IOD mission under H2020 umbrella by an external entity such as the European Space Agency.
An example of how the IOD service could be supported by H2020 would start with the creation of the IOD office, thereby preparing the basic infrastructure for a European IOD service. The IOD office, acting as a one stop shop for IOD activities, would also manage the subcontracting activities that will be carried out to implement IOD missions with H2020 financing. In order to avoid conflict of interests, the IOD office constituents will not be allowed to bid for the subcontracted activities, which will be amount to most of the institutional financing. At the same time, the ESA technical overview should start, in order to support the implementation of the missions.
In the following work programs a number of missions could be initiated, with a mix of institutional IOD missions (with IOD payload in the region of 50 Kg) and smaller IOD missions (with IOD payload below 10 Kg to be sold potentially in the commercial market).
It is expected that, for the IOD institutional missions, the support should decrease gradually, as with time IOD tickets will be sold around a central payload. It is assumed that the first institutional IOD mission will be financed in full by the institutions. For small IOD missions, an initial support from the institutions would be needed in addition to the costs covered by IOD tickets sold to commercial clients. In this case, the objective is to go towards a fully commercially funded small mission.
Both types of mission would rely on a launch opportunity provided by the EC, as well as being overseen technically by ESA. The IOD office would enable having coherence among all the missions, as well as providing additional services (IOD intelligence, IOD opportunities matchmaking and investors matchmaking).
The roadmap also offers the possibility, after the initial years, to evaluate if the market is responding to the public procurement of an IOD service and in the effect on the community of the missions that have been implemented until then. In addition, upon the completion of this phase and of the first missions, the institutions will be able to assess the benefits of performing IOD with this type of scheme.
Concerning the H2020 financial support for fostering the IOD service emergence, based on the carried out estimations the following can be assumed:
- the IOD strategy office would require around 350-400 thousand Euros per year of EC contribution. Said amount represents the revenues of the IOD technology intelligence business unit within the assumed long term procurement agreement;
- an institutional IOD mission could be implemented with around 22M Euros of total EC contribution, provided over a 3 years’ timeframe, under the assumption of full funding of missions costs and contribution in kind of the launcher;
- a small IOD mission could be implemented with around 2M Euros of EC contribution over a 2 years’ timeframe, under the assumption of 50% funding of the costs of the first mission, with contribution in kind of the launcher, and no funding from the third mission onwards
These values are expected to decrease (up to 20/30% after the first missions or IOD service operations).