eSpace

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#spacesustainability #lifecycle #spacesystems

by Dr. Andrew Wilson.

The application of Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) within the concurrent engineering process presents a viable method for assessing environmental, social and economic impacts of space missions. Despite the importance of this for embedding sustainability principles into spacecraft design, the novelty of the concept within the concurrent engineering process has meant that the approach has not yet been widely implemented. In this presentation, Dr Wilson will discuss his experience and the challenges of applying LCE within a concurrent design setting. Drawing upon examples and case studies, he will outline the progress being made within this field, and present key findings that are important takeaways when including LCE as an engineering discipline within concurrent design studies of space systems.

Dr Andrew Ross Wilson is a Lecturer in Environmental Management at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). He holds a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Management from GCU and a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Strathclyde.Andrew specialises in space sustainability, with a particular focus on life cycle assessment, carbon accounting and energy systems of engineering projects. However, Andrew’s technical background is in environmental management, and his work is extremely interdisciplinary. In this regard, Andrew’s services are often consulted by external parties with regard to the assessment, mitigation and communication of sustainability issues. This can often vary from being very specific and technical-facing, to being broad and societal-facing, and the range of risks, impacts and decision-making processes in between. Ultimately, his work aims to inform how society can transition towards a future that is truly sustainable, as envisaged through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Due to his contribution to science and technological development, Andrew was awarded the 2018 Young Scot Environment Award, designated one of Junior Chamber International’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons of Scotland in 2019, won the ESA-EISC Space for Sustainability Award 2021, and was named GCU Alumni of the Year 2022.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
01:23 Start of presentation
04:29 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for Space
10:15 Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA)
11:48 LCSA/LCA at early stage design
13:07 Concurrent Engineering and CDF
19:01 LCA versus eco-design & Life Cycle Engineering (LCE)
22:59 Strathclyde Space Systems Database (SSSD)
28:14 Issues regarding the application of LCE
29:41 Mission design case studies and methodology
32:43 Technical implementation of LCE in Concurrent Design tool
38:04 Findings: LCE results & Discussion on sensitivity of single-score
41:33 Findings: Observations on behaviour of concurrent design engineers
42:46 Conclusions: Avoiding greenwashing, Importance of space LCA, LCSA vs LCA for space, integration of LCE into concurrent engineering, etc.
46:14 Conclusion
47:18 Thank you & Reference to EPFL courses + start Q&A
48:37 Q1: Can students access the ESA LCA database? If so, how?
52:29 Q2: What is an Ecoinvent license?
53:28 Q3: How did you divide the responsibility for space sustainability within the concurrent design team?
56:37 Q4: Is there a need for an add-on to the concurrent design tool?
58:35 Q5: How do you deal with the lack of knowledge of the design at early stage?
1:00:50 Q6: How do you incentivize engineers to take into account sustainability at early stage design?

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#solarflares #cubesat #epfl
The X-ray imaging spectrometer STIX onboard ESA’s flagship mission Solar Orbiter was designed and build with a Swiss lead at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). STIX is now in its fourth year of operation and has recorded so far over 45’000 solar flares. The STIX detectors designed by CEA, France, work extremely reliably with all 32 detectors still working nominally showing only minimal degradation due to radiation damage. We still have over 50 STIX flight spare detectors available, and four of those will fly on a NASA cubesat mission called PADRE lead by UC Berkeley (PI J.C. Martinez-Oliveros). In this talk, Säm Krucker will introduce the science of solar flares and the STIX instrument and then show how STIX X-ray detectors are used in the PADRE cubsat mission.

Säm Krucker's main scientific interests are in problems of plasma astrophysics, especially solar and heliospheric physics, from an observational and experimental point of view. He has a strong background in space hardware and I have been the PI of NASA’s Small Explorer mission RHESSI and NASA’s sounding rocket program FOXSI. He is currently the lead of the hard X-ray imaging spectrometer STIX onboard ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission.

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This video is private.

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by Stephan Hellmich & Mathieu Udriot

eSpace - EPFL Space Center is a pioneer in space sustainability. With the Clean Space Initiative, initially proposed to deorbit Swisscube which eventually spin-off from EPFL as the ClearSpace-1 mission to recover the Vega Secondary Payload Adapter (VESPA), the Center can draw on a decade of experience in space sustainability. More recently, in 2019 eSpace initiated a two-year pilot phase of a research initiative on sustainable space logistics (RISSL). This initiative was the starting point of several consortium projects that attracted many stakeholders, resulting in several publications and the development of a space logistics modelling software for mission profile evaluation and optimization [1]. The success of this pilot phase encouraged the Center to continue exploring this new domain. Current research includes life cycle assessment of space transportation vehicles, accounting for space debris risks and the reentry phase, optimisation of space logistics, and mission design. These projects will help understanding and improving the situation in space. It is especially important to assess future impacts of new missions early in the design phase, in order to support space agencies and industry in designing new concepts with lower environmental impacts.

Thanks to these 10+ years of experience, in 2021 EPFL was selected to host the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR), which incentivizes space operators to adopt more responsible mission design and operational behaviour. Its competence and neutrality, two important prerequisites for a successful, fair and widely accepted evaluation system, make eSpace the ideal host institution for the rating. The definition of sustainability in space is constantly evolving. eSpace is therefore continuously improving the formulation of the SSR to address emerging environmental, societal, and economic factors in the assessment.

These efforts are complemented by the EPFL laboratory of astrophysics (LASTRO), which is currently working on detection and characterization of resident objects in Earth’s orbit in large astronomical data archives [2]. The information extracted from these archives will allow a better evaluation of the evolution and current state of the small debris population, and support active debris removal that will be necessary to secure the future use of Earth's orbit.

In order to unite EPFL’s forces in the domain of sustainability in space, eSpace has recently launched the Sustainable Space Hub (SSH). The goal of the Hub is to coherently manage and foster the growth of these topics. 5 institutes within EPFL are currently involved in research and development projects in the field of space sustainability. The hub is connecting these individual projects in a workflow that rests on three intertwined pillars: measure, understand, and act for space sustainability.

The projects associated with each pillar are essential to find solutions to the problems arising from the rapidly increasing space activities, the risk from space debris, and the generated atmospheric impacts. The Hub will help identify and promote new technologies in space sustainability with new services in orbit and on the ground.

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#epfl #lunarhub #epfllunarhub #espace #space #moon
eSpace (EPFL Space Center) introduced in 2020 a new initiative aimed at bridging a series of identified knowledge and technology gaps within the latest lunar exploration and infrastructure development roadmaps. We, at eSpace, advocate for a holistic space program that effectively and sustainably explores and develops the Moon. To do so, upcoming exploration missions call for ever more capable robotic systems and instruments, including the capability to explore longer distances +100 km) within highly constrained time windows (e.g., shorter daylight cycles in polar regions) and under extreme environmental conditions of which little to no data is readily available (permanently shadowed regions and lunar skylights are some examples).

A long-term, effective, faster, and minimally altered characterization of these regions requires improved mobility systems as well as the use of high-resolution mapping and imagery, which most lunar missions to date still lack. Today we present EPFL’s Lunar Hub, eSpace's latest venture to create a home base for lunar research and technology within Switzerland. We are already working toward developing the technology required to traverse the lunar surface 100 times faster than any autonomous rover ever before, providing robotic assets and soon humans with the highest resolution maps of key, so far inaccessible regions with our lunar reconnaissance drone, defining the most effective ways in which small heterogeneous groups of robots can cooperate to access, explore, and jointly prospect the most scientifically valuable regions, and equipping them with the latest optical instrumentation with our Dragonfly camera.

David is currently responsible for the Lunar Hub, leading the center’s efforts in lunar research and technology development with projects on topics spanning from fast off-Earth robotic mobility, reconnaissance drones, low-cardinality multi-agent systems, to novel sensing instrumentation for localization and mapping. He also provides system-level and managerial support to projects on active deorbiting of defunct satellites as well as supporting the activities of multiple students’ associations related to space at EPFL."

Formerly he held several positions as an NPI researcher for the Automation & Robotics Lab at the European Space Agency and as a visiting scientist for the Institute of System Dynamics & Control of the German Aerospace Center. He holds a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carlos III University of Madrid, a Master’s Degree in Space Studies from the International Space University, and a PhD in robotics from Tohoku University.

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During this webinar, you will see how a pipeline for a spatial mission at ESA is developed, from the definition of the goal to the implementation, and all the challenges we had to face.
The talk will focus on asteroid detection (SSOs), where they are, and why we need to detect them, but also on the Euclid mission.
The presentation will be concluded with an overview of the experience gained during two years through the YGT program, technically but also humanly.

Aurelien Verdier obtained his MSc degree in Physics with a thesis on Radioastronomy.
Employed at EPFL as a Swiss National Trainee, he is currently working in the Euclid team at ESA, ESAC, developing a pipeline to detect Solar System Objects (SSOs) in Euclid images.
His background is: Astrophysics, Astronomy, Cosmology, and particle physics.
He is at his first professional experience after graduation.
He previously took part in several student activities, such as building a radiotelescope (EPFL Radio Waves) and space awareness (Swiss Space Awareness).

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#virup #epfl #cosmosarchaeology

Science communication is key for sharing research discoveries to a wide audience. In this talk, we will present VIRUP, The Virtual Reality Universe Project, a brand new software developed at the Laboratory of Astrophysic of EPFL, that provides the most modern dynamical view of our Universe through one of the cutting-edge communication techniques : Virtual Reality (VR).

VIRUP allows users to travel through space and time, ranging from the artificial satellites orbiting the Earth to the outer confines of the Universe. Journeys in this VR environment help to understand the hierarchical organization of our universe at different scales as well as developing intuitions for astrophysical processes. In addition to standard VR systems like gamer headsets, VIRUP is compatible with specific immersion systems like 360-panorama, half-caves or 180-domes. VIRUP has also recently been used to create a twenty minute-long documentary named: Archaeology of Light.

Yves Revaz is a senior scientist at LASTRO/EPFL. After successful studies in physics at EPFL, he completed his PhD entitled: "Dynamics of external regions of spiral galaxies and constraints on the dark matter", at the Geneva Observatory in the galactic dynamics group of Prof. D. Pfenniger. He then moved to the Paris Observatory to work at the LERMA (Laboratory for Studies of Radiation and Matter in Astrophysics) with Prof. F. Combes on the understanding of cooling flows in galaxy clusters. He joined LASTRO at EPFL in 2007, where he developed a new TreePM/SPH chemo-dynamical code called GEAR as well as the pNbody python library, a parallelized toolbox designed to manipulate large N-body systems.
Relying on those tools, he studied the chemical evolution of galaxies. His current main research focuses on the evolution of dwarf spheroidal galaxies and their link with cosmology.
Beside his research Yves Revaz also led the development of VIRUP, an interactive virtual reality (VR) environment that lets anyone discover the cosmos through observed and simulated data. Between 2020 and 2021, he directed the realization of two films (in 2D, 3D, 180-3D and 360-3D) fully based on VIRUP. A short movie presenting the most complete 3D map of the Universe as observed by the eBOSS survey and a 21 minutes-long documentary entitled Archaeology of Light, where we chart out a journey throughout the various scales of the Universe.

Florian Cabot is a software engineer at SCITAS/EPFL. He studied computer science at the University of Geneva. His passion for astrophysics made him complete his Msc with a project on Virtual Reality exoplanetary data visualization at the Geneva Observatory in 2018. He met Yves Revaz at the Observatory with whom he started the VIRUP project. He developed this project from scratch, writing all the tools needed to do VR rendering and interaction with large amounts of data. He ported the project to different projection systems at the Experimental Museology lab, and directed and scripted the two movies made with VIRUP.
He moved this year to EPFL SCITAS computing center to do scientific visualization both for the Square Kilometer Array project in collaboration with LASTRO and the EUROFusion consortium in collaboration with the Swiss Plasma Center.

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The webinar will explore the peculiarities of the ESA ExoMars mission, focusing on the technical challenges that a mission of this kind presents. In addition, starting from the question “As students, are we really aware of complexities of interplanetary space mission?” the tasks performed as a young graduate will be illustrated, together with the difficulties and challenges that characterise the transition from being a student to become an engineer.

Francesco Garrone obtained his MSc degree in Space Engineering in 2020 with a thesis in Chemical Propulsion.

He is currently employed at EPFL as Swiss National Trainee and works in the ExoMars Engineer Team at ESA, ESTEC, supporting the System Engineer for what concern system and verification engineering. His background is: spacecraft systems, spacecraft propulsion, system integration and verification.

He is at his first professional experience after graduation. He previously took part in several student activities, such as a micro-sat constellation for Earth Observation phase A study, and the development, integration, testing and launch of a microgravity scientific payload at the ZARM drop-tower.

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