23–25 Oct 2018
ESTEC
Europe/Amsterdam timezone

GreenSat: ecodesign of the PROBA-V mission

23 Oct 2018, 15:00
30m
Erasmus building (ESTEC)

Erasmus building

ESTEC

Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands
EcoDesign for space missions Ecodesign

Speaker

Ms An Vercalsteren (VITO)

Description

With the GreenSat project, ESA wants to evolve from an assessment of the environmental impact of an existing satellite mission to a significant reduction of the environmental impact through a redesign of this mission. During this presentation, the approach and the first results of this exercise for the PROBA-V mission will be shown.
PROBA (PRoject for On-Board Autonomy) is a family of small satellites developed for ESA by QinetiQ Space. PROBA-V, which is tasked to perform global vegetation monitoring, was launched in May 2013 and is fully operational since then.
The first step in the ecodesign of the PROBA-V mission was the development of an LCA (life cycle assessment) model for this mission. Based on this model, the environmental hotspots were defined.
As a second step, a brainstorm and workshop were organized, involving relevant experts, to identify ecodesign options for the PROBA-V mission. A selection process is followed to select the most promising options. A first step in this selection process included a trade-off analysis, taking into account criteria like potential environmental impact reduction, feasibility, system level impact, expected cost impact. In the next steps a semi-quantitative screening of the environmental reduction potential and possible burden shifting is performed.
The currently running third step is to further elaborate the selected ecodesign options. Each option is technically developed to a higher level of maturity and the environmental impact and benefit are calculated with LCA. Finally, in a fourth step, the environmental impact of the new space mission, including all selected ecodesign options, will be determined and compared to the baseline. The cost, performance, risk, schedule and feasibility of the options will be further evaluated to select the three most promising options. For these options, a roadmap will be developed.

Primary authors

Ms An Vercalsteren (VITO) Mr Theo Geerken (VITO) Ms Katrien Boonen (VITO) Benoît Remy (QinetiQ Space) Mr Quinten Legasse (QinetiQ Space)

Presentation materials