The two-day meeting brought together all consortium members to review the progress achieved during the first year of activities, discuss ongoing research developments, and align on the next phases of the project.
The event provided a valuable opportunity to share results, strengthen collaboration among partners, and assess the advancement of the project's scientific and technological objectives.
The meeting was also attended by the THREAD Advisory Board, composed of Geert Smet (ESA), Yann Charront (CNES), and Simone D’Alessandro (ASI), who provided valuable technical feedback on the project's progress and planned future activities.
The first year of THREAD was primarily dedicated to the conceptualization, development, and characterization of thermite-based building blocks for Thermite-for-Demise (T4D) applications.
Significant progress was achieved in the development of two enabling technologies, namely thermite 3D-printing and thermite sintering, both of which successfully demonstrated the capability to produce energetic materials meeting the project's reactivity requirements.
In parallel, the consortium completed the initial characterization of the materials and laid the foundations for future predictive modelling activities.
Building on these achievements, the second year of the project will focus on environmental testing under representative conditions, the validation of thermite-based concepts through dedicated experimental campaigns, and the implementation of the first multiscale predictive models for T4D applications.
These activities will provide the data required to assess the practical applicability of the technology and support its future integration into spacecraft Design-for-Demise strategies.
The THREAD consortium would like to thank ENEA for hosting the event and all partners for their active participation and contributions.