Advanced Technologies
Long term strategic planning is necessary to anticipate these requirements. The technologies considered extend beyond the missions on the program. A key concept is the 'Technology Reference Studies' or TRS. These are hypothetical science-driven missions which are not in the existing program, and may employ 'blue sky' technologies, but which can nonetheless be envisaged as realistic in the medium-term future.
The TRS concept aims to:
- Demonstrate a solid science case
- Identify possible instruments
- Deduce required power/consumable budgets
- Define maximum and minimum options
In 2004 the SCI-AT team used the ESTEC Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) for the conceptual design of an X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy (XEUS) mission deployed around L2 and implemented in a formation flight with a mirror spacecraft (MSC) and detector spacecraft (DSC). The study focused on the MSC design and the formation flying aspects.