Act-rpt-0812 Act Report - General Presentation Of The Team

The Advanced Concepts Team A corporate think-tank within DG-PI May 2008 This document provides information on the Advanced Concepts Team, a corporate technical think-tank within DG-PI. It reflects on the evolution of the team and on ways to take full advantage of its potential for ESA within DG-P services.

Introduction Since its creation in 2002 within the General Studies Programme (ESA/ADMIN(2002)13, rev.1), the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) has been tasked to monitor, perform and foster research on advanced space systems, innovative concepts and working methods. To this aim, the ACT: •

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is composed of mainly research fellows (post-docs) and young graduates, who originate from a broad variety of academic fields and aim essentially at an academic career; interacts externally almost exclusively with universities (specifically small, innovative research institutes often with no prior link to ESA nor the space sector); operates as a truly interdisciplinary team bound to high scientific standards.

Via its research, the team acts as a cross-departmental pathfinder to explore novel, potentially promising areas for ESA and the space sector, ranging from applied to basic fundamental ones. These are generally: •

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too immature to be yet taken up by regular ESA programmes or included into projects (e.g. biomimetic approaches to engineering, novel working methods based on new IT tools like virtual collaborative environments, artificial intelligence and swarm intelligence); or concepts and techniques from areas with no obvious links to the space sector (e.g. brain-machine interfaces, liquid breathing, bioengineering, collaborative robotics); or emerging directly from cutting edge basic scientific research not yet connected to applications (e.g. mathematical global optimisation techniques, cloud-based uncertainty modelling, reliable computing); or areas where ESA is likely to build up competence but is hesitating due to the lack of concrete short-term programmatic needs (e.g. planetary protection research by former ACT RF - now planetary protection officer within HME, space nuclear power sources); or far-reaching subjects in which ESA is expected to have a technically solid position (e.g. solar power satellites, use of hypo-metabolic states for space travel ("hibernation"), asteroid deflection).

Many of these subjects require skills that sometimes are not readily available in other parts of the Agency.

Status Following a steady growth after the first years since its establishment, the group reached its fully operational status of about 15 persons in 2005/2006. The size and the thematic orientations of the group are continuously changing taking advantage of the nature of the RF and YGT programmes to quickly adapt the ACT competence base to ESA’s strategic needs. As of beginning 2008, the research areas covered by the team are: Biomimetics, Nanotechnology, Fundamental Physics, Operational Research, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Energy Systems. Internal and collaborative research with academia are at the core of the ACT activities, providing the basis for those activities related to opening the horizon of the Agency towards new areas, offering an entry point for innovative academic research ideas, bridging these to operational technical expertise and deriving trends and strategic directions from research progress. The activities of the team are therefore contributing to the aim of the General Studies Programme of preparing the future of the Agency, by providing a direct information link to those areas and communities of advanced research where “future technologies” originate and are first visible.

ACT Research The research directions of the group are derived from discussions with the upper management as well as from the daily team activities that provide naturally a detailed outlook on advances and trends in research. In order to stimulate innovation and creative thinking, ACT members are asked to continuously propose new ideas and research subjects and encouraged to dedicate a certain percentage of their time on new, self-defined areas of research.

Organisation and outputs Most of the research is performed within the team in small subgroups. If a subject requires additional expertise not readily available within the group or within ESA, the topic is proposed for a collaborative study together with researchers from European universities via the Ariadna scheme, i.e. small, short-term research contracts with universities (15K€, 25K€, 35K€) In conducting their research, ACT members take advantage of a unique environment, which offers: •

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Strong link with European universities. RFs usually arrive to the ACT directly from their universities and the work in the ACT, including the Ariadna scheme, offers them the opportunity to consolidate and broaden their links with the academic world to where they eventually will return. A continuous feedback from the academic community is thus available to stimulate and improve the outcome of their research activity. Interdisciplinarity of the team. The daily exchange of ideas with people having radically different research and personal backgrounds, stimulate the individual ACT team member to transversal thinking, setting a fertile ground where innovative thinking can grow. Direct contact with ESA scientists and engineers. Working at ESTEC, research fellows usually establish relatively quickly personal contacts with ESA staff in the

field of specialisation closest to theirs. This provides them with direct insight into the ongoing developments in the space sector as well as its expected future needs. Clearly, this set-up also requires a substantial effort in terms of team coordination. The interaction between researchers with different expertise can generate more holistic and informed solutions only if a previous common understanding of the addressed problems is created. This challenge is partially circumvented by the organization of frequent meetings, by teaming, mentoring and supervision, and the use of novel concurrent working and organisation tools. The impact of the ACT research is measured in terms of concrete projects outputs. These outputs may take the following form: • • • • •

publications and quotations in peer-reviewed international journals internal input- and position-papers for strategy discussions knowledge transfers to ESA directorates involvement of new academic communities creation and motivation of academic research networks around topics of interest to ESA and space in general

Furthermore, and similar to one of the goals of the YGT programme (forming young graduates on a space discipline and providing them with a good knowledge of ESA for a career in the European space industry) but focusing on academia and research institutes, ACT researchers (which originate mainly from non-space related fields) pursue their academic careers with a better knowledge of ESA's needs and of the space sector in general. They will also play a role in raising space’s and ESA’s awareness among the scientific community and in more general terms the society.

In-house, rigorous scientific capacity Some of the activities of the ACT are oriented to providing a critical analysis on technical subjects for which a specific knowledge is not available in any ESA directorate, or for which appropriate manpower is not rapidly available. This has the effect of anticipating ESA needs by providing “entry points” to potentially disruptive methods (e.g. DS4G thruster, distributed evolutionary computing) while at the same time blocking those numerous attempts to sell breakthroughs that are flawed (e.g. assessment of break-through propulsion concepts from a theoretical physics standpoint).

Provision of strategic analysis Disruptive changes normally occur when disciplinary boundaries are crossed and concepts and techniques are applied out of their context (e.g. Google Earth and Earth observation data, participatory networks of news/media content generation versus centrally organised one-way communication). Therefore, one of the defining qualities of think-tanks is their interdisciplinary nature which is experienced in the ACT as integral part of the daily work. With short reports compiled quickly and responding to needs of policy and decision makers, longer documents analysing trends and advances in niche areas potentially interesting for ESA (e.g. Space Tourism report) and the trial, within the ACT itself, of new working methodologies (e.g. Web 2.0 methodologies for internal organisation, group and data management), DG-PI benefits from the essential independent and objective way of thinking of a team made up of constantly renewed members unconstrained by an ESA career-oriented approach.

While not entering the field of "futurology" or "futures studies", the ACT is also attempting to collect and consider research roadmaps and external technology forecasts in comparison with the research expectations of the team. While highly speculative in nature, these allow understanding expected evolutions and could be used to test the robustness of strategies. Examples for such roadmaps are attached to this report as Annex A.

Evolution of the ACT In order to take full advantage of the organisational ties between the ACT and the DG’s Policy Office, some concrete evolutionary steps of the ACT have been implemented to further strengthen the potential of the team to serve the specific needs within a policy office. While it is important to keep the “idea generation process” within the ACT (innovation, stimulation, creativity, out-of-space-box thinking, cross-disciplinary approach are key assets to the success of the team), the move into DG-P has allowed to introduce a more targeted component into the activities selection process, consistent with ESA's strategic needs, and possibly, to widen the scope of the ACT also to non-technical subjects. These can take several forms and contribute to a more practical general approach of the group. The ACT evolutionary steps take into account the need to provide the team with some ample boundaries in order to direct its creativity and free-thinking assets in a direction that is in synergy with the overall strategic guidelines of the Agency. They encompass in particular:

# 1 – Definition of strategic inputs Based on high-level strategy documents (e.g. Agenda 2011, ESA LTP, European Space Policy/Programme), DG-P provides the ACT with a set of priority strategic directions for the activities of the Agency. These directions serve as guidelines for the research orientations of the ACT as well as for the evolution of its competence base. They help the team understand the strategic context within which the Agency operates as well as its medium and long-term perspectives in terms of new activities but also in terms of corporate evolution. As a result, the ACT position within ESA is improved by fully placing the group at corporate level and not at its border. While not a constraining frame – the ACT keeps its freedom of thinking – the strategic directions influence the ACT research by helping to focus its efforts in the most promising directions for the Agency.

# 2 – Evolution of the competence base of the ACT The flexibility offered by the continuous turnover of research fellows and YGTs is used to adapt the competence base of the ACT to the applicable strategic guidelines. It is proposed to enlarge the team’s traditional competences by covering possibly non-technical subjects, including social sciences. The approach needs to remain interdisciplinary and its research work strictly based on rigorous, high scientific standards.

# 3 – Improved visibility of outputs The effective diffusion of the ACT's outputs within the Agency is considered crucial for an

effective action. While the team has gained significant visibility among the academic community and outside ESA in general (publications, conference participation, transparency via dynamic website, pro-active communication to academia), ESA-internally the team is likely still not enough well known and integrated. ESA management should be kept informed regularly about the team’s activities/capacities as well as about findings, where appropriate. To this end, the ACT has organised a 2-day Advanced Concepts Workshop in January 2008, increased the number of small workshops at ESTEC (e.g. global optimisation techniques for trajectory design, advances in space tethers, Furoshiki follow-up for space webs, Solar Power Satellites, metamaterials for space applications) and prepares since beginning 2007 quarterly reports. It is proposed to prepare also short versions of these ACT Quarterly Newsletters and to distribute them Agency-wide to all Directorates. Furthermore a yearly report to the Directors Committee is proposed, reporting about the major achievements of the team and illustrating the general research directions for the following year, so as to receive comments and inputs, as appropriate.

# 4 – Short-term topical teams Without the need for complex administrative preparation and management, the ACT regularly sets up small teams of three to five persons, which are operational on a very short term. These teams, taking advantage of their diverse backgrounds, creativity and their scientific rigour, are able to start and conclude quick and focused assessments for DG-P within the competences of the group. Based on the needs identified through the strategic guidelines (see above), these teams may provide support to the preparation of new activities or to the evaluation of new concepts.

# 5 - Targeting of the ACT academic network The ACT academic network is currently composed of roughly 500 European researchers located in all ESA and cooperating member states. About 50 different research groups have directly cooperated with the ACT on specific projects in the frame of the Ariadna scheme. For most studies, the cooperation was the first contact with ESA or space in general. The growth of this network has, so far, followed the various interests of the group. A more targeted development according to the strategic objectives of the Agency is possible and would allow communities of specific interest to get involved in ESA/space activities. Similar to their very early involvement into EC research programmes, the Ariadna scheme provides the academic communities of new/future ESA Member States with a simplified first entry point into ESA and space research. In order to take full advantage of synergies with the work done by the Education office and the Network Partnering Initiative, the ACT keeps very close working relations with LEXEP and TEC-NT (including regular informal meetings, participation in selection boards, reviews etc). The targeted development of the ACT academic network implies on one hand to understand and follow the evolution of the European academic landscape and the needs of universities, and on the other hand to accurately define the strategic objectives. It requires substantial effort by the team to spread its academic network to new research areas and constantly attract new groups and research communities. Using modern communication tools based on social networks, the ACT intends to improve the dynamism of the network, while at the same time naturally distributing some of the tasks related to maintaining and expanding it to universities.

# 6 - Consolidating external links The main external interfaces of the group are universities and research centres. Based on a shared mutual interest in some of the studied topics, the ACT has established informal links to research groups in industry and national space agencies on a case-by-case, interesttriggered basis. Followed by an increasing external request, the group is in the process to making these interactions more regular and systematic. To this end, meetings with Astrium UK and CNES DLA have taken place since beginning 2008. In April 2008, a link was also established with BEPA (Bureau of European Policy Advisers), an EC internal think-tank advising directly the president of the Commission. The meeting identified mutual interest on both sides for further information exchange, including a planned presentation of the ACT to a BEPA strategy-working group and cooperation with respect to scenario building.

Conclusions The ACT, a technical corporate research think-tank within DG-PI, is exploring advanced concepts, techniques and working methods, which are beyond the horizon of regular ESA activities and projects. It is an integral part of the preparation of the future of and for the Agency, in a coherent and consistent manner with the General Studies Programme. The team relies on the interdisciplinary cooperation of a dynamic group of young researchers, who join the group for one to two years as part of their academic career, thus adding constantly new competence and a fresh standpoint to the team and ESA.