Military/Aerospace Electronics

The UK Space Agency is further funding eleven space projects involving UK work with international partners on innovative technology. The agency’s International Bilateral Fund is being used for Phase 2 backing of a range of companies and organisations – from the Alan Turing Institute using Artificial Intelligence to improve space operations to XCAM working on an X-ray imaging instrument to ...

ClearSpace, the in-orbit services specialist founded in Switzerland, is highlighting that its CLEAR Mission – for space debris removal – has reached a key development milestone. Specifically, it has achieved Preliminary Design Review (PDR) maturity, marking a significant advancement for making space operations more sustainable, said the company. The mission is funded as part of the UK Space Agency’s national ...

The UK Space Agency, in collaboration with the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), has announced an initiative – dubbed the Space Portfolio – to support early-stage space startups. An investment fund backed by the government, it will be providing seed funding to science and technology start-ups and SMEs. In total £8 million will be allocated. Investments will typically ...

XCAM, the Northampton-based digital imaging specialist, is developing a variant of its Nuscis electronics for the context imager in Craft Prospect’s Salient project. In Salient, the Glasgow-based Craft Prospect will be using its on-board processing algorithms in a data processing module to perform autonomous detection and decision making for spacecraft operations. These will be based on image data provided by ...

  Concurrent Technologies has put Intel Atom x7000RE Amston Lake processors into a VME board, adding image processing and AI audio processing accelerators to the venerable form factor. CPU choice on the board, called Rhea, is either the four-core 1.5GHz x7433RE, or the two-core 2GHz x7213RE. “Whilst no longer the cutting edge of technology, VME continues to be a widely ...

The UK Government has launched the first funding call for its C-LEO programme – to help boost the country’s satellite communications sector – which was announced in the recent Spring Budget. There is £60 million of funding being made available over the next four years for satellite constellation-related ideas. Awards of up to £20 million per project will be funded ...

The use of robots should trump that of astronauts when it comes to government funded space travel, suggests Lord Rees (OM, FRS, HonFREng, FMedSci, FRAS, HonFInstP), the cosmologist and astrophysicist. The UK’s Astronomer Royal – his official title – has said government funding should no longer be used to send people into space. Talking in the context of space exploration ...

Nasa has awarded a contract to Airbus to design and build the GRACE-C twin spacecraft, in order to continue the measurement of the Earth’s gravity field. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working with the German Space Agency, and the craft will be built at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). During its planned five year lifetime, the GRACE-C (Gravity Recovery ...

Quadsat, the Danish drone-based antenna testing company, has launched its product range with an extended breadth of frequency ranges and the addition of uplink capabilities. The Quadsat range for RF measurement comprises: QS 1-18 DL (downlink tests, covering S-KU band), QS 6-24 DL (downlink tests, X – KA low band), QS 17-31 DL (downlink, KA band), QS 6-24 DL/UL (downlink ...

Simera Sense, an optical payload specialist for small satellites, has raised €13.5 million in its first funding round. The funding will be used to further develop its camera product range, increase its production capacity, and accelerate its on-board processing capabilities, said the company. Additional production sites were also being planned in Europe. Specifically, it will fast-track the development of higher-resolution ...