Proba-3 infographic: Made in Europe and Canada

This small but ambitious mission is a collaboration between ESA’s smaller Member States, enabled through ESA’s long-established General Support Technology Programme – which identifies leading-edge technologies and develops them for space readiness – along with ESA’s Science Directorate, where Proba-3 is designated as a Science ‘mission of opportunity’.

Some 14 Member States and some 40 companies have participated in developing the mission:

Spain

Sener serves as mission prime contractor with Airbus Defence and Space developing the spacecraft platforms and GMV responsible for guidance navigation and control and flight dynamics. Crisa supplied the electrical interface unit, Thales the S-band transponder and Deimos contributed mission analysis.

Belgium

Redwire Space is responsible for spacecraft avionics, spacecraft assembly integration and validation and mission operations. Centre Spatial de Liège produced ASPIICS with OIP the focal plane assembly and AMOS the laser optical head. Antwerp Space contributed the space radio frequency baseband equipment and Spacebel the onboard, ground system and simulation software

Poland

CBK contributed the payload electronics and filter wheel, N7S the payload software, Creotech electronics, Sener in Poland mechanisms, GMV the relative GNSS algorithm, Solaris Optics the polarisers and PCO the payload structure.

Austria

Beyond Gravity supplied the GNSS receiver, ATOS the radio frequency special checkout equipment and Siemens the ground operations software

Czechia

Toptec contributed optics, Serenum the front door assembly and Honeywell gyroscopes

Denmark

Technical University of Denmark oversaw the Vision Based Sensor System

Ireland

onsemi contributed electronics

Italy

The National Institute for Astrophysics produced the shadow position sensors, Leonardo the solar panels and Aviotec the multi-layer insulation

Luxembourg

Euro-Composites contributed the structure

Portugal

Tekever manufactured the mission’s inter-satellite links and GMV oversaw the in-orbit rendezvous experiment

Romania

IMT made the Occulter position sensor and Comoti was responsible for the mission’s ground support equipment

Switzerland

MICOS made the laser metrology optical head while the Physical Meteorological Observatory in Davos produced the DARA radiometer

UK

MDA Space undertook the laser metrology with ABSL supplying spacecraft batteries

Canada

NGC Aerospace contributed to guidance, navigation and control with MDA Space supplying laser metrology electronics and MSCI reaction wheels.