SCOPS (Scalable COntroller for Power Sources) was born from an existing reliance on ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) microchips from countries outside Europe, largely the US. ASICs are used on satellites to control various power supply lines in parallel, such as multiband communication, and image and video processing. The high radiation space environment also calls for special design characteristics not found on terrestrial chips.
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Funded through the Horizon Europe programme, SCOPS will seek to develop the ASIC using exclusively European suppliers, thereby removing the prospect of third-party export regulations. According to Thales Alenia Space, the chips will become the core of new space missions for telecommunications, Earth observation and space exploration.
“SCOPS will favour the growth of the sector both inside and outside our borders and will generate quality employment and technological leadership, multiplying the return to European citizens of the investment provided by this Horizon Europe initiative,” said Stéphane Terranova, CEO of Thales Alenia Space in Spain, which is based at Tres Cantos on the outskirts of Madrid.
“For the Thales Alenia Space team in Tres Cantos it is a source of pride to lead such an avant-garde initiative.”
Alongside Thales, the SCOPS consortium also features SMEs such as ISD (Greece and Ireland) and Synergie CAD (France) as well as technology institutes such as IMEC (Belgium) and INPT (France). Thales Alenia Space’s team in Spain is leading the project and is responsible for its general coordination. The company will also be responsible for the final validation of the project results, carrying out a complete campaign of electrical and radiation tests in the SCOPS ASIC.
SCOPS will be based on the results of the PROMISE project – also led by Thales Alenia Space - which is currently working on a library of building blocks designed and tested for ASIC chips, aiming to cut production lead time by one-third and reduce the overall development costs of satellite components.
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