With the digital technology and flexibility offered by our new product line, operators can dynamically allocate bandwidth anywhere and at any time, for all bands. Thales Alenia Space’s Space Inspire solution is based on a new medium-size platform, featuring digital technology, a high degree of flexibility and fully reprogrammable in orbit, including for coverage zones. Our Belgian team is now developing a new-generation EPC, more highly integrated and offering greater performance, flexibility and competitiveness, to address the growing number of constellation projects and within the scope of our Space Inspire initiative.
And nearly 16 years later, our devices continue to send images taken by New Horizon back to Earth – the most distant images ever taken! A changing market in the new millennium New Horizon continues its journey within our solar System, recently passing the distance mark of 50 astronomical units (1 AU = average distance from the Earth to the Sun). The mythic space probe New Horizon, carrying several TAS devices, transmitted superb images of Pluto, the “once and future planet” farthest from the Sun. Between 20, 500 EPCs were chosen for various scientific and telecom programs on behalf of ESA, NASA and the Chinese and Indian space agencies. The EPC 2G was introduced on the Russian Express A launched in March 2003. At the same time, we set up microwave test facilities to handle EPC/TWT integration, initially for Ku-band applications, then gradually extended to other bandwidths. We then began to develop a second-generation EPC 2G, expanding the product’s power and voltage envelope, to ensure compatibility with different platforms for telecom missions, as well as scientific observation missions. The first EPCs, manufactured in Charleroi Belgium, were delivered in 1994 for the Telecom 2 satellite program.
ESA integrated the EPC prototype with a TWT and confirmed that the two were compatible. In 1969, the TAS Belgian team (at the time ETCA) won a contract from ESA to design and build a high-voltage power supply prototype for traveling wave tubes, including an electrical mockup and a demonstration model delivered to ESTEC, ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Center. Over the years, Thales Alenia Space in Belgium has become one of the world’s leading suppliers of this type of equipment.
This is a good opportunity to take a closer look at these spaceborne power supplies, the clever devices that provide the high voltage needed for traveling wave tubes (TWT), the all-important amplifiers on satellites. The 1,000th electronic power conditioner (EPC) built by Thales Alenia Space in Belgium was on the SES-17 satellite.
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