Polish company with a space contract. They have a very important task

Managing precise operations in space – even if it is “only” Earth orbit – is not the easiest thing. We are even more happy that, upon order from the European Space Agency, a control unit for such activities will be produced in cooperation by a Polish company. The project is implemented as part of the COSMIC initiative in the ESA Space Security program.

Tasks of the new unit

AROBS Polska and Romanian AROBS Engineering, belonging to one group, will build a control unit for precise orbital operations for ESA. The initiative aims to develop a flexible and scalable control unit to support precision operations in low Earth orbit. It is intended to enable more efficient operations such as rendezvous, interception and satellite servicing.

To this end, a control unit will be developed that will interface with sensors and cameras and have sufficient processing power and memory to perform a variety of key high-throughput data processing functions. These will include: image processing, navigation and control of robotic elements, as well as support for functions such as image compression.

The controller is expected to be the primary unit providing the necessary monitoring and control functions during precision approach and interception maneuvers. The development of the unit also assumes scalability and modularity, which will allow it to be easily adapted to various future missions without the need to incur additional engineering and qualification costs.

A group with experience

The AROBS Group, through its engineering office in Romania, has over 12 years of experience in creating application and platform software for various systems and payloads for the space sector. In this project, the team will leverage its experience in image processing and image-based navigation by implementing and testing a set of demonstration image processing algorithms that will acquire and process images in real time from emulated sources WAC (Wide Angle Camera) and NAC (Narrow Angle Camera). These algorithms will generate mathematical results and provide data to the GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control) software demonstration module dedicated to guidance, navigation and control.

Thanks to the development of CRIMSON as a universal unit, the costs of building such solutions for future missions will be significantly reduced. The project started in September 2024 and is funded under ESA’s Clean Space Core Actions, COSMIC initiative, under the Agency’s Space Security Program, Period 2.