Thales Alenia Space To Lead Consortium for French DIANE Satellite Capture & Inspection Mission

France has awarded a contract to a consortium led by Thales Alenia Space for a groundbreaking satellite mission that will capture and inspect a small satellite in a demonstration set to occur by the end of the decade.

The mission, part of the European Robotic Orbital Support Services (EROSS) program, is slated to utilize a pair of spacecraft to demonstrate advanced rendezvous and servicing capabilities. Being supported by undisclosed funding from the French space agency CNES and the state-owned investment bank Bpifrance, represents a major step forward in orbital technology.

Scheduled to launch before the end of 2028, the EROSS program aims to test a range of satellite servicing functions in low Earth orbit. This will involve a one-cubic-meter-sized client satellite and a significantly larger servicer equipped with a robotic arm.

EROSS is designed to showcase various demonstrations, including satellite inspection, attitude control takeover, refueling, and payload assembly or exchange. A key aspect of the program will be the robotic arm's interaction with a part of the client satellite that has not been specifically engineered for on-orbit servicing.

Thales Alenia Space project manager Stéphanie Behar-Lafenêtre highlighted that the DIANE mission, which stands for Démonstration d’Inspection et Amarrage Novatrice Embarquée, will differ from EROSS by including a scenario where the client satellite is spun to simulate a loss of attitude and orbit control.

“In the DIANE contract, the servicer uses its cameras (both on the platform and on the robotic arm) to perform a close-range inspection of the satellite,...In operational conditions, the servicer can be used to, in addition to inspection, slow down the spinning of the satellite and move it towards a more appropriate location. This prefigures active debris removal. Debris being, here, old spacecraft.” - Stéphanie Behar-Lafenêtre, Thales Alenia Space Project Manager

The DIANE mission will thus utilize the client satellite’s “unprepared” configuration to test these capabilities. The EROSS servicer currently under development will require a software update to handle a spinning target, which may be uploaded either on the ground or in orbit.

The timeline for the DIANE mission will be contingent on the availability of the EROSS assets, but it is anticipated that the mission could commence soon after the initial EROSS demonstration.

Thales Alenia Space's French division, a joint venture between Thales of France and Leonardo of Italy, is overseeing the overall DIANE mission. The French engineering firm Magellium Artal Group is contributing its expertise in image processing for vision-based position determination and local inspection. The German aerospace research agency DLR is responsible for developing the robotic arm, while the French branch of European space mission integrator Telespazio is managing customer service and the creation of a processing and visualization center for inspection data.

Consortium members are still deliberating whether to launch the servicer and client spacecraft together on the same rocket or separately. The mission is expected to include a demonstration phase lasting three to four months, followed by approximately five years of operational service for the robotic spacecraft.