Whether satellites, spacecraft or space debris – GESTRA, the "German Experimental Surveillance and Tracking Radar", is a state-of-the-art radar system for observing and tracking objects in space. It operates in the microwave range and explores the Low Earth Orbit of 300 to 3,000 kilometres, i.e. the range in which most satellites and the International Space Station (ISS) are located. This makes it possible, for example, to protect space systems or the ISS from a collision with debris particles by providing a timely warning. Millions of tiny particles orbit the earth and, at a speed of around 28,000 km/h, pose a threat to active space technologies. GESTRA was developed and built by the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR on behalf of the German Space Agency at DLR.

Phase shifter for Electrically Scanned Array Antenna

A wire harness in military or aerospace applications is an assembly of wires, cables, connectors, and protective components designed to organize and route electrical and signal connections efficiently

The SCFAN-CTRL-5U is an internal fan control module installed inside the chassis to manage cooling performance. It integrates with FAN trays and operates through Kontron’s Power Supply Control Module (PSCM) to control up to one 12V @ 3.5A fan and seven 12V @ 2.5A fans. This module ensures efficient thermal management and stable system operation in high-performance VPX-based embedded systems. It is deployed in the M-SAM-II multi-function radar system, providing reliable and optimized cooling control for mission-critical environments.

Features ▪ Xilinx Zynq-7000 Series ARM-Cortex-A9 Core ▪ 10/100/1000 Ethernet Interface ▪ General-Purpose Input/Output ▪ SDLC Interface ▪ RS-232 Interface ▪ VPX 3U Form Factor ▪ Wedge lock, Plug-in Design ▪ Customized Rear I/O Pin Map

In collaboration with Hanwha Systems, we developed and optimized a Transformer-based AI model for ship and aircraft detection on embedded platforms. Targeting NVIDIA Jetson Orin AGX, the project utilized the MSAR (640×640) dataset along with large-scale training databases built from public sources. The RT-DETR model, currently under review, was optimized through hardware-friendly design, Int8 quantization, and specialized inference acceleration. As a result, the solution achieved up to 5x faster inference speed while maintaining accuracy, reaching 20% of NVIDIA TensorRT performance. This demonstrates the ability to deliver reliable, real-time detection capabilities in resource-constrained embedded environments, enabling next-generation defense and surveillance applications.

Developed and manufactured by MPS Microsystems based on customer specifications, this lens actuator forms an essential component of a laser guidance system for unmanned flying objects. It enables 2 lens groups to be displaced individually over a total range of 48 mm and makes it possible to focus a laser over a distance of several kilometres. The main technical difficulty inherent to this actuator lies in meeting very stringent requirements for alignment between the two lens groups (< 10 µm) and in maintaining a very small tilt of the lenses over their entire stroke (lateral deviation < 2 µm). The key part making it possible to ensure such specifications is a frame machined by milling from an aluminium block, into which the 2 drive systems are fastened. These systems each consist of a Ø16 mm brushless motor and a Ø4 mm ball screw with an axial play of less than 5 µm. Backlash-free and frictionless sliding of the lens holders is ensured by standard L306 linear ball bearings manufactured by MPS Microsystems.

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