Second step taken towards European technological independence regarding large deployable reflectors

May 2019

HPS-consortium wins ESA´s LEOB challenge

The European consortium of 17 partners out of six European countries initiated and led by HPS GmbH has won the prestigious ESA contract for LEOB, the Large European Reflector for Earth Observation. The call had been initiated by ESA´s Earth Observation directorate in 2018.

The HPS consortium, including LSS Germany and RUAG Space Germany, won against severe competition from Italy, Spain, and the U.K.. Total budget amounts to 5 million €; taken together with contract number one on the development of a large deployable reflector out of late 2017, the budget to develop this critical technology now amounts to 12.5 million €. Future mission targets include geological changes, monitoring of vegetation, communications, Big Data, Internet of Things, and sciences.

Kick-off was on April 15th, 2019, the project will conclude with a tested Engineering Model exactly two years later in April 2021. It is the last precursor project before the development of a flight model for two future Copernicus missions: CIMR with a 7-8m reflector, operating in L- through Ka-band, rotating on top of the satellite at a speed of ten turns per minute, and ROSE-L with 12 meters of diameter, operating in L-band.

Precursing ESA-technology programs and LEA out of Horizon 2020 had laid the foundations for this great success.