The current medium power PPS®5000 thruster unit which equips several satellites uses xenon as its propellant. However due to a sharp rise in costs and an emerging shortage of xenon, significant impacts on the economics of certain future mission profiles such as those planned for the replacement of current geostationary (GEO) telecommunication satellites are expected. It is thus necessary to seek alternative more abundant and cheaper propellant alternatives such as krypton. However, today there is no European thruster available on the market in the range 2.5 to 5 kW qualified to be used with krypton. The replacement of xenon by krypton would normally require a full qualification comprising many hours years of ground testing to be performed prior to obtain the ‘ready for flight’ status as required by the current ECSS standards. This full qualification serves to provide a high level of confidence in the thrusters operational abilities but it is a timely and costly process. INVICTUS proposes to implement a delta-qualification approach to extend the qualification status of an established electrical propulsion system. The successful acceptance of this approach by the satellite integrator and operators, will be an important stepping stone to help future programs towards a clear evolution in the ECSS standards. It will also be possible to generalize this approach to changes not only limited to propellant or cathode emitter material, but will help address other future potential modifications driven by innovation such as changes in discharge chamber wall material or electro-magnet coils settings. By the end of project, the PPS ®5000 will be ready for flight (TRL8) using krypton, a worldwide first-of-a-kind based on two delta qualifications exercises (xenon to krypton with the necessary adaptations to the fluidic regulator and PPU NG2, and a change from an Asian to an EU supplier for the Cathode emitter) allowing the deployment of these thruster units by 2026.

Faced with the increasing demands of satellite contractors in terms of costs and mission capabilities, the EU’s space sector must be ready to react as quickly as possible to the needs related to the evolution of space infrastructures and markets to stand out from the competition at global level. Electric Propulsion (EP), based on Hall-Effect Thruster (HET), is strategic to foster the EU’s space sector competitiveness. Europe needs competitive EP Systems or EPS (combination of a Power Processing Unit (PPU) driving and delivering electrical power to a HET). The PPU has a strong impact on the EPS cost and performances. Completed in 2021, the H2020 GaNOMIC project demonstrated the feasibility of major disruptive technologies for the PPU. A PPU based on these technologies will open the way to extend drastically the mission field capability and efficiency of EPS, pushing propulsion systems to an unprecedented level of competitiveness, capability, and efficiency. To achieve these impacts, ECOPROPU, takes over from GaNOMIC and will develop five key generic Building Blocks for the PPU which are crucial to unlock the target performances of the EPS: three functions of the PPU (Anode module, Digital processing module, Magnet power converter) and two other Building Blocks on which the Anode module rely (DAB digital controller and Planar transformer). ECOPROPU will also prepare and evaluate the HET adaptation to high voltage operation brought by this innovative PPU by better understanding stability and magnet-related phenomena and a complete operation mapping of a large domain thruster (2-7kW, 250-700V operating domain). The impact of this project will be to give the consortium industry the capacity by 2025 to develop disruptive and economic PPU and versatile EPS (medium to high power class), allowing to reach a European worldwide leadership in EPS and offer to European space primes and agencies improved performances and cost reduction for their space missions.

For the future of space exploration and space logistics, and to reduce costs for orbit transportation of future payloads, very high-power Hall Effect thrusters of 20 kW or above are at the forefront of several initiatives today. Be it as single or clustered units, the combined thrust of these electric propulsion systems (EPS) paves the way to allowing larger spacecraft and more ambitious missions to be envisaged. However, given that these missions would require significant burn time of the EPS, several important issues must be addressed that go beyond the simple ability of manufacturing larger EPS components. Specifically, qualifying such electric thrusters for lifetime is currently a showstopper. In the race to the Moon and Mars, as well as other lucrative commercial missions within earths orbit beyond 2030, the European Space industry must catch up with the US. Studies within Europe have already been initiated for the incremental development of 20-kW class Hall thrusters such as the FP7 HiPER project which produced the PPS20k ML thruster up to TRL4, FP7 CHEOPS project which permitted SITAEL to develop their 20kW HET, ESA projects allowing UNIPI to develop their nested multi-channel TANDEM thruster or the ongoing H2020 ASPIRE project led by SITAEL. Nevertheless, given the challenges and the opportunities that VHP present, research such as proposed in CHEOPS-VHP-BB must be anticipated now ahead of its effective deployment in 2030-40. Project activities will complement ongoing thruster-focused development activities with research and development on key building blocks essential for the future use of VHP Hall thruster systems: overall system architecture against various mission use cases, robust and cost-effective approach to qualification using Probabilistic Failure Analysis, manufacturability of key components subject to wear, notably the discharge chamber and cathode and the ability to envisage alternative propellants and power sources for future missions.

Industry 4.0, business digitalisation, artificial intelligence and KETs are increasingly taking centre stage, not as buzzwords but as pillars for innovation in all business sectors at a global level. The defence sector is no exception.Accordingly, all players involved in this field are experiencing evolution in business processes and human resources: the former in regard to technological advancements; the latter regarding the skills needed to exploit such technologies in the proper way.In particular, human resources need to possess or develop new knowledge, abilities, and competences to help companies complete the quantum leap which is expected from the “fourth industrial revolution”. The problem facing the European defence industry is twofold: (i) it is experiencing difficulty in finding the necessary skills in order to sustain its leadership, competitiveness and sustainability in the medium- to long-term; (ii) aging staff and difficulties in engaging and keeping young professionals are preventing the sector from reshaping company capabilities and creating new, attractive job opportunities for talented workers of any age.ASSETs+ project aspires to build a sustainable human resources supply chain which allows defence companies to innovate by both attracting highly-skilled young workers and upskilling their employees thanks to customised, complementary education & training programmes addressing three main technologies: Robotics, C4ISTAR and Cybersecurity aspects related to the first two.The project will focus on 4 main activities:Skill Strategy to translate the selected technologies into actionable sets of relevant fine-grained skills to be (potentially) transformed into new job profiles;Design of three training programmes to address high-school students, university students, employees;E&T programme realisation and improvement;Development of community of practice (i) and body of knowledge (ii) to promote new skills acquisition, development and retention

The ARCHITEC – Antireflective Reinforced nanostruCtures by HybrId TEChnologies – aims to improve antireflective (AR) optical coatings elaborated by Oblique Angle Deposition (OAD). This project follows Florian Maudet's PhD thesis work where ultra-high performance coatings were developed using gradient index multilayer stacks for applications in both the visible-SWIR [400-1800]nm and MWIR [3.5-5]µm spectral bands. The various solutions identified, although very efficient from an optical point of view (in terms of transmission) suffer from robustness problems. Thus, the main limitations of the current process are: (i) the poor mechanical strength of nanostructured layers for vis-SWIR applications, where layer degradation is noticed during handling or cleaning steps, (ii) chemical pollution within the nanostructured layers for MWIR applications, including oxidation of the semiconductors used, which leads to a decrease in optical transmission. The ARCHITEC project proposes to address these issues through hybrid technologies by bringing together three partners whose core expertise are linked to innovations in the fields of materials science and optics, namely: - the Ppna team at the Pprime Institute, - the R&T team at SAFRAN Electronics and Defense, - the SME RESCOLL. The solutions considered in this project to overcome the problems identified involve the deployment of new deposition tools and post-deposition encapsulation processes. The new deposition tools will allow samples to rotate and tilt in situ during OAD runs. Consequently, the development of complete stacks can be achieved in a single step, at constant temperature and without returning to atmospheric pressure, possibly improving the mechanical resistance of the treatments and significantly reducing pollution problems. Moreover, the in situ control of inclination and rotation means that numerous and complex architectures can be obtained. The modification of the morphology of the columns towards chevrons is a solid approach to the mechanical reinforcement of the nanostructured layers. Hybrid solutions for improving the mechanical resistance of deposits for visible-SWIR applications consist in reinforcing an AR stack structured by OAD via a Sol-Gel post-deposition, with high optical performance. This post-deposition, whether or not penetrating into the nanostructured layers, must be taken into account when developing the optical design. The Sol-Gel or aerogel solutions considered consist of: (i) fill the pores of the porous structure to reinforce it without significantly altering the optical index of the structure, (ii) apply a very thin surface layer to improve the resistance properties to mechanical aggression. In addition, it is also planned to bring new functionalities to AR stacks through Sol-Gel layers such as anti-fouling, hydrophobicity and so on. The improvement of the chemical robustness of nanostructured layers for MWIR applications consists in the addition of a dense surface layer via PVD included in the optical design. Another avenue explored will be the addition of an ultra-fine conformal and penetrating layer within structures even with a very high aspect ratio using Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology. The economic and societal benefits associated with the industrialization of the solutions developed under this project are significant from both a civil and military point of view.