Space: the new frontier

Thales Alenia Space is anticipating the needs of the future and developing solutions to meet them.

Autonomous stratospheric geostationary platforms

As part of a consortium notably including the Pégase competitiveness cluster, Thales Alenia Space is studying a new concept for an autonomous stratospheric platform midway between a satellite and a UAV. It will have a design lifetime of more than 5 years.

Perched at an altitude of around 20 kilometres to scan airspace, this platform will be able to host payloads of 200 kg delivering 4 kW for a broad range of applications such as:

• border and maritime piracy surveillance
• boosting of GSM networks for major public events
• GPS augmentation over areas of dense traffic

Extra-terrestrial sample collection systems

Thales Alenia Space is prime contractor on the two ExoMars exploration missions (2016 and 2018) for the European Space Agency (ESA).

The 2018 mission will fly a descent module to Mars carrying a rover designed to collect soil samples from beneath the surface at depths down to 2 meters. For this purpose, ESA has asked Thales Alenia Space’s domain experts in Turin to look at developing a technology capable of recovering unique samples directly from Mars. The proposed concept is based on an inflatable capture mechanism.

Smart telecommunications antennas

Thales Alenia Space has developed a new tool that gives virtual network operators (VNOs) more transparency and more autonomy in managing their telecom networks.

Using cutting-edge software, VNOs — interfacing with the control centre, satellite owner, the satellite itself and end-users — will now be able

• to allocate satellite capacity to customers,
• commission and maintain end-users’ modems,
• carry out necessary tests and checks,
• supervise their network (history and statistics).

Designed for civil and military telecom service operators and suppliers, this solution will significantly reduce the operating cost of managing telecom networks.