The LATTICE Campaign
The new ESA Campaign ‘Large Space Structure Construction, Maintenance, and Recycling Technologies (LATTICE)’ seeks to develop basic technology building blocks that will enable the European Space sector to go beyond the present state-of-the-art in single-use-and-dispose spacecraft and move towards re-usable, efficient, affordable, and sustainable large space infrastructure.
Large Space Structures (LSSs) are space segments that are assembled in space because they do not fit onboard standard launchers. Innovative ideas are needed to construct, maintain, and recycle these assets in space, using only robots. The aim of the LATTICE campaign is to advance the understanding of the lifecycle of large space structures and to be fully aware of the capabilities and limitations as we move towards a more sustainable and re-usable space infrastructure.
Call for ideas
ESA’s Discovery Element of the Basic Activities is seeking new ideas that explore the assembly and utilisation of modular and reusable large spacecraft. A particular focus of this is the novelty and the degree to which it enables large space structures.
The call for ideas is organised along 6 themes that are derived from the steps involved in the LSS development life-cycle:
- Design and Engineering: covering the aspects of design, modularity concepts, analysis, and planning (production, logistics and operation) of the LSS.
- Ground Production: covering the aspects of on-ground production of the materials, supplies, parts, subsystems, and modules that make up the LSS. Packaging and logistics preparation are also considered in this theme.
- Logistics: covering the aspects of ground-to-space transportation, delivery to the LSS assembly and integration site, as well as on-LSS warehousing and distribution.
- On-orbit Assembly: covering the aspects of assembly and integration of the LSS from smaller modular, subsystems and modules, metrology, and verification of the LSS.
- Utilisation: covering the aspects of commissioning, management, resupply, inspection, maintenance, and repair of the LSS.
- Decommissioning: covering the aspects of disassembly, separation, sorting, and re-use/recycling.
To know more about the campaign and how to apply click on the button below.
Read more and apply here
