Bertin Technologies was part of a team of companies, led by OHB System, who carried out the study Columbus Crew On-Board Tasks for the European Space Agency, Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Micro-gravity. The study manager was Dr Kass, representing OHB. Bertin Technologies, was responsible for the work packages covering Safety/ Reliability, and Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) Design.

Close work was carried out with Boeing, who provided operations support for the STS-107 mission, in particular for the biological experiments on the Biopack facility. Dr Kass was part of the ESA team responsible for safety, procedures, training, and ground and support for flight operations.

Now part of Moog Space and Defense Group, work with Bradford Engineering involved design, flight and ground safety, and operations of Biopack for flight on the Shuttle STS-107 mission. The Biopack facility is a Space Shuttle middeck locker based research tool. It provides the experimenter with a very versatile research cabinet for biological experiments under microgravity and in-flight control conditions.

Work on an ‘Astronaut Tutoring - Intelligent System’ – ATIS - was carried out with CISE SPA (Centro Informazioni Studi Esperienze, Milano) now part of ENEL Group. An operational prototype was created by CISE, for which, on request from ESA, Dr Kass assisted with detailed specifications for the ‘brain’, and carried out the subsequent evaluation of the project.

COMEX (Companie Maritime D'Expertise) was part of a team of companies, led by OHB System, who carried out the study Columbus Crew On-Board Tasks for the European Space Agency, Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Micro-gravity. The study manager was Dr Kass of OHB. COMEX, whose expertise is professional diving and related services covering maritime, submarine, medical and industrial sectors, was responsible for the work packages covering space analogous activities synergetic with underwater operations.

Work was carried out with EADS ASTRIUM on several human spaceflight-related projects including general operations, biological and neuro-physiological facilities for Spacelab, Columbus, and the ISS. The following centres were involved, sometimes in their earlier incarnations: ASTRIUM-Toulouse, France (Aerospatiale), ASTRIUM-Bremen (MBB-ERNO), ASTRIUM-Friedrichshafen (Dornier).

Representing the Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) programme of the European Space Agency, Dr Kass introduced the project "Management Centre for the Transport of Hazardous Goods in the Alpine Region”, lead by LKZ GmbH, Prien am Chiemsee, Germany. The study focused on the provision of harmonised services to the transport community in order to manage transport fleets and goods in line with regulations, an especially complex task because of the peculiar conditions of the regional environment (high mountains, presence of tunnels, etc.)

Dr Kass joined OHB (Orbitale Hochtechnologie Bremen) System when it was still a small company in Bremen, Germany, with less than two dozen employees, at a time when most of its contracts came from German government sources. With his proposal to the European Space Agency in response to a call to conduct a study on Columbus Crew On-Board Tasks, he won the first proposal for the company with ESA against half a dozen European consortia encompassing all the major aerospace companies in Europe.

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An alternative energy project, CSP-FoSyS –Concentrating Solar Power Forecast System for Participation in the Spanish Electricity Market using Earth Observation and Communication Technologies developed by the European Space Agency was introduced to ESA’s Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) programmee by Dr Kass. The project consortium was headed by Solar Millennium AG, Germany, partnered with the German Space Agency’s Earth Observation centre - Deutsche Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum (DLR-DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen.

Alternative energy and its management has become of increasing importance because of the dearth of clean energy sources, the need to reduce carbon emissions, and the mounting costs of oil. How these sources are managed is as much of importance as the nature of these sources themselves. This project tackled the challenges of capturing concentrated solar power, while forecasting solar irradiation and thus energy production and its managed and useful introduction into the power grid.