🔧 Behind the Scenes – Part 9: powering a servicer.

⚡ A spacecraft is only as good as the power that keeps it alive. So when Europe's power-systems community gathers, EROSS SC shows up.

Our Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS) architect, Guido CHIAPPORI (Thales Alenia Space), spent the week at the 14th European Space Power Conference (ESPC 2026) in Estoril, Portugal – European Space Agency - ESA's flagship event bringing together the equipment makers, architects and experts behind every satellite's power chain.

For a mission like EROSS SC, the EPS is the backbone: it has to generate, store, protect and distribute power reliably – through solar generators, batteries, power conditioning and distribution units (PCDU) and power processing units (PPU) – and do it while a robotic payload draws, and even feeds back, energy on board. That last point is where it gets interesting: our partners at German Aerospace Center (DLR) presented a poster on their Base Power and Isolation Unit (BPIU), the interface that lets a robotic arm plug into a conventional spacecraft power system safely. We'd just run its design review together in September – so it was a real pleasure to see the work on a conference wall.

But here's the part that doesn't show up in any datasheet: most of the value of a week like this is human.

Across a few days, Guido put faces to names across the whole European power-supply ecosystem – solar arrays, batteries, distribution and protection equipment – reconnected threads that had gone quiet, clarified what each side needs to move forward, and lined up the next technical steps. Architectures aren't built from catalogues; they're built from relationships, trust, and the kind of unplanned corridor conversation you simply can't have over email.

That's the quiet power of these conferences: they turn a list of suppliers into a living network of competences – one that keeps growing, mission after mission, and that Europe will need if it wants to build its on-orbit future on its own terms.

Huge thanks to ESA and the ESPC team for the conference, and to everyone who took the time to talk shop with us in Estoril. 🛰️🇪🇺🇵🇹

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