New-Tech Europe | January 2016

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Technology Pod Innovation Award Delft Hyperloop, Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) Pod Technical Excellence Award Badgerloop, University of Wisconsin-Madison Pod Technical Excellence Award Hyperloop at Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech Pod Technical Excellence Award HyperXite, University of California Irvine “Congratulations to the finalists and all the student teams who competed in the first-ever SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition,” said John Sharp, chancellor of The Texas A&M University System. “I am especially proud of Aerospace Hyperloop, a finalist representing Texas A&M University and its world-class engineering program in the next round.” “World-changing events such as this do not happen often, so to be able to say one took place at Texas A&M is truly special,” said Michael K. Young, president of Texas A&M. “It is our hope that everyone who participated uses the momentum from this historic meeting of young innovators to go out into the world and continue to create and innovate. This weekend’s competition proves the future is in very good hands with such an inspiring and talented group of young people, many of whom are right here at Texas A&M. Congratulations to all the young men and women and their teams headed to California and that certainly includes Texas A&M’s Aerospace Hyperloop team.”

the nRFready Smart Remote 3

“The future of engineering was on display this weekend in College Station,” said M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M Engineering. “We challenge our students to step outside their comfort zones and approach engineering problems in novel ways. The young men and women at this competition definitely accomplished that, and presented design and technical concepts that were well beyond anyone’s expectations.” Technical awards were also awarded to student teams whose designs displayed outstanding technical merit in subsystem and design. the service and the DLR German Space Administration funding the development of the laser terminal. Dubbed the ‘SpaceDataHighway’, EDRS will revolutionise satcoms as Europe’s first optical communication network, capable of relaying user data in near-real time at an unprecedented 1.8 Gbit/s. Normally, low-orbiting satellites must come within view of a ground station before they can send their information to Earth. EDRS instead collects their information from its higher, geo-stationary position via laser and immediately relays it to the ground, dramatically improving access to time-critical and potentially life-saving data. ESA, Airbus and DLR will in a few days begin testing EDRS- A’s general health and performance, working with the EDRS ground stations in Germany, Belgium and the UK. Test links to its first customers, the European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites, will then be carried out over several weeks for the service to begin this summer. Data relay for the International Space Station will start in 2018.

first SpaceDataHighway Laser Relay in Orbit

EDRS-A liftoff

The European Data Relay System’s first laser terminal has reached space aboard its host satellite and is now under way to its final operating position. EDRS-A was launched on 29 January as part of the Eutelsat- 9B telecom satellite at 22:20 GMT atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. EDRS is ESA’s most ambitious telecom programme yet, taking the form of a public–private partnership between ESA and Airbus Defence and Space, with Airbus operating

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