A RESEARCH group based at the University of Limerick has won an important contract from the European Space Agency. The €300,000 deal opens the way to further contracts from the agency.
Details of the 18-month research initiative were released yesterday. The contract is with Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, one of a number of advanced centres for science, engineering and technology funded by Science Foundation Ireland, said Lero director Prof Mike Hinchey.
He said Ireland had received few research contracts from the agency despite the fact that, as a member contributing to the body, Ireland should get a quota of contracts. This deal changed that.
“We are getting our entitlement back into Ireland,” something that made this contract particularly significant, he said.
Limerick hosts the Lero headquarters but it also involves partner institutions including Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Dundalk Institute of Technology. This contract involves Limerick and Trinity, Prof Hinchey said.
Lero in Limerick will work on space flight software that helps increase a satellite’s ability to correct its own errors and make decisions for itself.
Trinity will develop a way to isolate blocks of software, for example those associated with experiments and software that controls flight. This would help to protect against multiple software failure should one element fail.