RESILIENT COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN NON-GEOSTATIONARY HIGH-ALTITUDE INCLINED ELLIPTICAL ORBITS (ARTES 4.0 SPL 4S 3A.230) - EXPRO+ (ON DELEGATION REQUEST)

The objective of this activity is to define the system requirements and the preliminary concept of a resilient communication systemoperating in non-geostationary high-altitude ellipticalorbits.TargetedImprovements: Enabling the development of high altitude inclined elliptical orbits satellite communications systems in ESA Member States for providing resilient communications.Description: Satcom satellites typically fly in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), or Geostationary Orbit (GEO). However, high-altitude elliptical orbits (HEO) offer special features ofinterest to resilient and secure satcom systems. This includes in particular coverage of Europe and polar regions thanks to the large orbital inclination. Furthermore, the HEO platform isexpected to share design and development similarities with existing GEO platforms, enabling faster development and deployment.Such a HEO system can enable the rapid provision of resilient and secure satellite communications for governmental use, ensuring secure service continuity andoperational resiliencethat satisfy the short-term secure communication needs. It will consist of several satellites placed in different orbits. This approach will provide an initial layer of protection againstjamming, as a single jammer would be unable to disrupt more than one satellite. Further robustness of the system shall be provided based on anti-jamming capabilities to be investigatedin the activity.In this activity, the different governmental and commercial use cases will be investigated, and mission and user requirements will be derived.The activity will study and compare multiple orbits of interest, and define concepts of mission, system, satellite, payload, and user terminal required to achieve the desired services.System requirements will be derived. In addition to anti jamming capability, the study shall analyse and trade-off various techniques for the system to stay resilient to other kinetic andnon-kinetic impairments. System development and deployment plan, business and cost analysis and related technology roadmap shall be defined. The defined use cases and theirrelated performance shall be confirmed by means of a comprehensive mission/system simulator.A key result of the analysis will be the confirmation of the possibility to develop and rapidly deploy the satellites for the envisioned HEO system, leveraging the experience of the Europeanindustry acquired in the development of platforms and payloads for GEO orbit