On 26 and 27 November Space Applications’ Brussels head office hosted the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of the European Robotic Orbital Support Services project (EROSS) – OG7. EROSS OG7 successfully passed its PDR milestone, which sets out to consolidate the system’s requirements and present its preliminary design, thus greenlighting the start of the detailed design and implementation phase.

EROSS OG7 is one of the 5 projects funded by the European Commission (EC) in the second phase of the space-robotics Strategic Research Cluster (SRC), the EC’s biggest H2020 robotics program.

The activity, led by Thales Alenia Space France, involves 11 partners from 8 European countries, including GMV. EROSS OG7 aims to develop a complete engineering solution for autonomous, efficient and safe performance of on-orbit satellite servicing. It also seeks to showcase European on-orbit solutions for both service providers and potential client satellites.

The project will assess and demonstrate the capability of the on-orbit servicing spacecraft (chaser) to perform rendezvous, capturing, grasping, berthing and manipulating of a collaborative client satellite (target) provisioned for servicing operations including refueling and payload transfer/replacement.
EROSS will also see to maintaining the building blocks of the forerunner I3DS OG4: Integrated 3D Sensors.

GMV has taken on responsibility for supporting integration of two of the blocks led by the company in the previous phase, i.e., ESROCOS (OG1) and ERGO (OG2). It is also contributing to the design and implementation of the guidance function during the rendezvous and capture phases, as well as offering support for inclusion of ESA’s ASSIST device as berthing and refueling interface in the final EROSS demonstration. Validation tests will be conducted on GMV’s inhouse Platform-art^© testbed.