15.02.2022
Innovation by the dozen: ESA funds 12 OPS-SAT experiments
ESA's OPS-SAT is a Swiss army knife in orbit. The 30-cm CubeSat packs a powerful onboard computer and an array of instruments that make it the ideal laboratory for testing innovative new technologies in space.
The OPS-SAT Space Lab is ESA’s only spacecraft open to innovation for anyone in Europe and enables new and exciting ideas to be tested live in space without the risk of damaging a multi-million-Euro satellite. Last summer, ESA’s Discovery programme issued a call for ideas for European industry and academia to apply to win funding and fly their experiments on a flight computer more powerful than any ESA has launched before.
“We were overwhelmed by the quality of the proposals we received,” says OPS-SAT spacecraft manager David Evans. “Our first task was to assess them on their innovativeness, with many more than we expected passing with flying colours. That made it really tricky to narrow them down.”
55 proposals in total were submitted through ESA’s Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP). 12 have now been awarded funding. The experiment ideas covered a wide range of ESA’s activities: telecommunications, spacecraft operations, Earth observation, technology development and more, to the excitement of many across ESA.
“I am really impressed by the diversity of ideas people came up with for experiments that could be flown on OPS-SAT,” adds David. “Particularly those using artificial intelligence. AI is a broad term for an effectively infinite toolbox, and it was great to see concrete applications using a variety of tools from across the field. It’s clear to me that when we give academia and industry access to such a powerful processor on a satellite, there is no end to the creative things they’ll think to do with it.”