Innovations for competitiveness: European views on “better-faster-cheaper”

The paper elaborates on “ lessons learned” from two recent ESA workshops, one focussing on the role of Innovation in the competitiveness of the space sector and the second on technology and engineering aspects conducive to better, faster and cheaper space programmes. The paper focuses primarily on four major aspects, namely:

1. a) the adaptations of industrial and public organisations to the global market needs;

2. b) the understanding of the bottleneck factors limiting competitiveness;

3. c) the trends toward new system architectures and new engineering and production methods;

4. d) the understanding of the role of new technology in the future applications.

Under the pressure of market forces and the influence of many global and regional players, applications of space systems and technology are becoming more and more competitive. It is well recognised that without major effort for innovation in industrial practices, organisations, R&D, marketing and financial approaches the European space sector will stagnate and loose its competence as well as its competitiveness. It is also recognised that a programme run according to the “better, faster, cheaper” philosophy relies on much closer integration of system design, development and verification, and draws heavily on a robust and comprehensive programme of technology development, which must run in parallel and off-line with respect to flight programmes.

A company's innovation capabilities will determine its future competitive advantage (in time, cost, performance or value) and overall growth potential. Innovation must be a process that can be counted on to provide repetitive, sustainable, long-term performance improvements. As such, it needs not depend on great breakthroughs in technology and concepts (which are accidental and rare). Rather, it could be based on bold evolution through the establishment of know-how, application of best practices, process effectiveness and high standards, performance measurement, and attention to customers and professional marketing. Having a technological lead allows industry to gain a competitive advantage in performance, cost and opportunities. Instrumental to better competitiveness is an R&D effort based on the adaptation of high technology products, capable of capturing new users, increasing production, decreasing the cost and delivery time and integrating high level of intelligence, information and autonomy. New systems will have to take in to account from the start what types of technologies are being developed or are already available in other areas outside space, and design their system accordingly. The future challenge for “faster, better, cheaper” appears to concern primarily “cost-effective”, performant autonomous spacecraft, “cost-effective”, reliable launching means and intelligent data fusion technologies and robust software serving mass- market real time services, distributed via EHF bands and Internet.

In conclusion, it can be noticed that in the past few years new approaches have considerably enlarged the ways in which space missions can be implemented. They are supported by true innovations in mission concepts, system architecture, development and technologies, in particular for the development of initiatives based on multi-mission mini-satellites platforms for communication and Earth observation missions. There are also definite limits to cost cutting (such as lowering heads counts and increasing efficiency), and therefore the strategic perspective must be shifted from the present emphasis on cost-driven enhancement to revenue-driven improvements for growth. And since the product life-cycle is continuously shortening, competitiveness is linked very strongly with the capability to generate new technology products which enhance cost/benefit performance.     

Current status and future plans for the general antiparticle spectrometer (GAPS)

We discuss current progress and future plans for the general antiparticle spectrometer experiment (GAPS). GAPS detects antideuterons through the X-rays and pions emitted during the deexcitation of exotic atoms formed when the antideuterons are slowed down and stopped in targets. GAPS provides an exceptionally sensitive means to detect cosmic-ray antideuterons. Cosmic-ray antideuterons can provide indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter in such form as neutralinos or Kaluza–Klein particles. We describe results of accelerator testing of GAPS prototypes, tentative design concepts for a flight GAPS detector, and near-term plans for flying a GAPS prototype on a balloon.     

A high quality low state observation of Cir X-1

Cir X-1 was extremely faint when we observed it with EXOSAT. The light curve clearly shows the source in two states; a faint variable state and a very faint but more constant state. The spectrum is very complicated but clearly shows the existence of an iron line.     

Influence of climatic operational conditions of a helicopter on physico-mechanical properties of composite materials

The results of numerical and experimental study of physico-mechanical properties of composite materials are proposed and variations in rigidity characteristics of the hub working part of the hingeless type within the entire range of helicopter operational temperatures are evaluated.     

ARTEMIS Mission Design

The ARTEMIS mission takes two of the five THEMIS spacecraft beyond their prime mission objectives and reuses them to study the Moon and the lunar space environment. Although the spacecraft and fuel resources were tailored to space observations from Earth orbit, sufficient fuel margins, spacecraft capability, and operational flexibility were present that with a circuitous, ballistic, constrained-thrust trajectory, new scientific information could be gleaned from the instruments near the Moon and in lunar orbit. We discuss the challenges of ARTEMIS trajectory design and describe its current implementation to address both heliophysics and planetary science objectives. In particular, we explain the challenges imposed by the constraints of the orbiting hardware and describe the trajectory solutions found in prolonged ballistic flight paths that include multiple lunar approaches, lunar flybys, low-energy trajectory segments, lunar Lissajous orbits, and low-lunar-periapse orbits. We conclude with a discussion of the risks that we took to enable the development and implementation of ARTEMIS.     

Command Link Encoder for Gemini Rendezvous

The first application of a magnetic encoder in a space-to-space command link was proven successful in the Gemini rendezvous missions. The functional aspects of the command link and the mechanization of the encoder are described.