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SPACEBEL plays a key role in the HiPeDaHU (High Performance Data Handling Unit) technological innovation partnership, which aims to transform the management and storage of high-performance on-board data for satellites.

A Major Challenge for Space Missions

With ever more powerful instruments, satellites are generating ever increasing volumes of data. However, for most of the current satellites, these data can only be transmitted to the ground when the satellite flies over a ground receiving station. The result is a growing need for on-board mass storage devices capable of efficiently storing and organising these data flows on board the satellite.

While sensors have evolved rapidly, satellite data storage and management technologies are struggling to keep pace. Current solutions are no longer able to cope with the data rates encountered. What's more, the growing complexity of storage, now necessarily structured in files (rather than simple sequential blocks), raises major challenges in terms of performance, cybersecurity and standardisation.

An Alliance of Complementary Expertise

To meet this challenge, two leading Belgian companies have joined forces:

• DELTATEC, a prime contractor well-known for the design and production of camera electronics and data processing systems, including the manufacture of mass memories.
• SPACEBEL, with experience in mass memory management accumulated over more than 20 space missions, and specialising in on-board software, data management and formatting, and digital simulation of space systems.

In addition to DELTATEC and SPACEBEL, the consortium includes the Centre Spatial de Liège (Uliège), CETIC and OHB Germany, reinforcing the collaborative and European dimension of this innovation initiative.

Through HiPeDaHU, the partners will be combining their know-how in hardware, firmware (the first layers of hardware abstraction) and software to develop a new mass memory architecture, suitable for both traditional and New Space applications.

This project is supported by the Skywin aerospace competitiveness cluster.