As part of the MESEO project, SATLANTIS will lead the activities of WP6 (On-board processing functions) focused on defining and prototyping on-board processing functions. In collaboration with the other MESEO consortium members, UBOTICA and CREOTECH, we will work on defining these functions to enhance data processing performance while adhering to applicable data management security constraints and ensuring harmonized interfaces for exportable functions. The ultimate goal is to prototype these functions to verify that they meet the required data processing performance and data management security standards.

To achieve the project’s objectives, SATLANTIS will enhance the performance of the Electronic Control System (ECS), which oversees the control of the entire payload and manages the data acquired by the imager. The standard ECS will be customized to optimize its performance in compression, memory usage, disk writing, and image processing. Various on-board compression techniques will be evaluated to achieve higher compression ratios, with an expected rate of up to 6:1, thereby improving storage capacity. Additionally, FPGA-based disk writing techniques will be employed to significantly boost data writing rates. Moreover, within the MESEO project, Ultra High Resolution (UHR) algorithms will be implemented on-board, enabling Level 1B processing in orbit. This approach will reduce data volume by up to a factor of 10, greatly enhancing the efficiency of the downlink budget.

The activities concerning WP6 (On-board processing functions) are ongoing, and the consortium is currently working on the preliminary definition of the on-board functions. Initial functional and interoperability requirements have been identified, and a preliminary on-board architecture has been outlined, along with the on-board operational framework.