German space tech company Astos Solutions has won a European Space Agency contract for the “Reconfigurable Control Design Framework for Micro-Launcher” project.
Announced on March 10, the contract was awarded through ESA’s Future Launcher Preparatory Programme (FLPP). ESA’s FLPP initiative, according to the agency, oversees studies and research activities aimed at fostering new disruptive technology with the potential to reduce costs, improve performance, improve reliability, or fulfill a specific need of an identified service, system, demonstrator, or mission.
Under the ESA contract, Astos will partner with TU Dresden to develop a suite of tools designed to enable robust control analysis, design and verification and validation to support the development of the next generation of microlaunchers.
Beneficiaries of the project won’t only be those developing microlaunchers, however. According to Dimitrios Gkoutzos, head of the Astos GNC/AOCS department, the suite of tools will be offered to newspace and established companies seeking state-of-the-art tools to advance their GNC development.
“Microlauncher companies and in general startups of the NewSpace industry cannot rely on years of internal knowledge acquired and the development of tools to quickly use these advanced approaches compared to the more established companies,” Dimitrios told European Spaceflight. “Robust control is a difficult topic requiring expert knowledge and dedicated tools. We really are bridging the gap between state-of-the-art research and industry application.”
The project will last for 15 months with Astos anticipating that the full suite of tools will be made available within the next 12 to 24 months, although individual tools may be available earlier.
