On the Delfi family of satellites, antenna deployment currently takes place using a burn wire system. This requires the antenna to be of the same length as the satellite body. To decouple this length, a new mechanism is needed. Neutrally stable tape springs actuated by shape memory alloys (SMAs) were proposed and studied, a concept previously proposed by Schultz et al in 2008. Thermal analysis, manufacturing tests, and lab testing of SMA actuated tape springs were performed. It was found that the concept can successfully deploy. Satellite integration and more fine-tuning of the mechanism is necessary for an in-flight application.

The use of UAVs for aircraft maintenance inspections has emerged as a promising solution to reduce maintenance costs and increase inspection quality by providing efficient and accurate data collection. In this paper a novel path planning approach is proposed for autonomous aircraft maintenance inspections using UAV swarms, leveraging a frontier-following algorithm. The algorithm guides a drone's trajectory to cover an aircraft's surface while maintaining a constant distance tangent to the surface. Designed to operate with delayed depth sensing methods, where scenes are reconstructed using structure from motion principles, this approach can be integrated with online reconstruction techniques. The frontier-following methodology results in a characteristic spiraling pattern behavior and facilitates complex surface tracking. The primary environment sensing detector, an RGB camera, is angled towards a target on the frontier. This allows for preliminary mapping of a route prior to traversal, while a collision avoidance strategy ensures collision-free flight by tracking an obstacle-free tunnel around the drone. Furthermore, this method can be scaled up for application to swarming agents, accelerating surface coverage. Simulation results demonstrate the algorithm's efficiency in achieving comprehensive surface coverage. Frontier-following path planning outperforms the 2D coverage path planning algorithm Random Walk, while performing lower than Spiral Spanning Tree Coverage - a result consistent with the latter's optimality for 2D surfaces. The proposed method's ability to successfully track complex 3D surfaces, a capability lacking in traditional 2D coverage path planning algorithms, renders it a promising solution for autonomous inspection systems.

Laser satellite communication effectively addresses high data rates, low latency, high security and license-free operation of down to Earth and inter-satellite data links, crucial for the growing data demands in space amid radio frequency spectrum congestion. However, this approach presents challenges, notably in meeting micro-radian pointing accuracy of laser beams due to the low divergence nature of the high frequency optical wavelengths utilised. Laser communication terminals handle the strict pointing accuracy requirements by segmenting the pointing strategies into coarse and fine pointing mechanisms. The coarse pointing assembly (CPA), the focus of this research, provides large field of view, low bandwidth laser beam pointing with minimal static and dynamic pointing error. Common pointing budgets allocate errors up to 100-500 μrad for static pointing and 1-5 μrad for dynamic pointing biases during operation. The CPA operates on the simultaneous actuation of two axes, elevation and azimuth, to anticipate relative spacecraft motion for inter-satellite links and alternatively, to Earth based ground stations. For complete closed loop pointing of the CPA, the elevation axes power, motor control signals and sensor feedback needs to pass over the rotating azimuth axis. The state of the art mechanisms used to accomplish this are flex wraps, flexible PCBs coiled around a central axis, which unspools and retracts for azimuthal movements. However, flex wraps negatively impact CPA pointing performance through their material stiffness destabilisation torques, limit the CPA lifetime due to material fatigue characteristics, pose manufacturing and assembly complexity, inhibit fully continuous 360 degree pointing operation of the CPA, and restrict the instruments achievable slew rates. The development in this domain of CPA technology has remained largely stagnant for multiple years.

This research looks into the field of contactless technology to analyse, design and develop a novel wireless interface for the continuous rotation, low torque and high precision pointing of CPAs, by aiming to eliminate all wired connections between the rotation axes. The conceptual design, analysis implementation and manufacturing of a contactless interface concept was carried out through a 10 month period, bringing the technology from TRL 1 to TRL 4, concluding with the testing and demonstration of a fully synchronous wireless power and bi-directional data transmission interface for CPA applications. The system accomplished a DC-DC raw power transfer efficiency of 73% and a maximum full duplex symbol rate over the contactless link of 100 kbps. Therefore, the contactless CPA interface displays the ability for a miniaturised and fully integrated solution to wirelessly couple power over free space while simultaneously enabling data transfer over a single coil element independent of any rotation effects.

The test results of the manufactured contactless interface displayed promise for the future implementation in a CPA, the system enables the full, undisturbed, continuous rotation of the CPA during operation. Complete pointing performance testing was not performed, however it is hypothesised that the implementation of the system would eliminate line resistance and material stiffness hysteric effects, conceivably removing all flex wrap induced pointing destabilisations and providing zero wear operations, removing instrument lifetime restrictions. However In doing so, the power transfer efficiency and number of signal data lines suffer a reduction as compared to flex wraps. As a part of this research, space radiation and thermal effects were not assessed in detail, however their influence was found to impact the overall design direction and component choices.