A consortium of six Spanish companies from the Basque Country, led by SENER Aeroespacial, in concert with EGILE Mechanics, FAGOR Automation, IBARMIA Innovatek, KORTA and ULMA Embedded Solutions, is working on a project to develop a high-performance scanner to be used in telescopes, cameras and other optical instruments. The project, called "HI-PREST, Technologies for highly reliable and accurate submicrometric devices in critical applications and environments," is funded by the Basque Government through the HAZITEK 2020 program.
The main goal of the HI-PREST project is for this consortium of companies from the Basque Country to produce a demonstrator for a high-accuracy scanner that results in a competitive and innovative product that can be offered to programs of the European Space Agency (ESA) or the American Space Agency (NASA). This will enable the entire manufacturing value chain for this type of component to develop this capacity, the goal being to turn the consortium partners into benchmark suppliers in the design, development and manufacture of submicrometric precision, highly stable mechanisms for critical applications and environments.
SENER Aeroespacial has a successful product on board the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), which, at the time, was developed with international vendors. The MTG scanner developed by SENER Aeroespacial allows the satellite to take a photograph with meter accuracy, at a distance of 36,000 km.