Session
Frank J. Redd Student Competition
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
As small spacecraft become more capable, so does the complexity of their operations. Searching for potential concurrent observation or access opportunities and ensuring they are compatible with one another may become tedious and repetitive for operators to manually compute. Currently available commercial-off-the-shelf tools that automate this process are capable but expensive. To address this problem, a new payload operations planning tool has been developed by the Space Flight Laboratory to handle the deterministic aspects of mission planning, such as: detecting observation opportunities, validating observations in a schedule, and generating lists of commands to be sent to satellites. This lightweight tool is generalizable to any Earth-observing mission configuration and can support complicated observation geometries. Open-source libraries were used to reduce the overhead for development as they decrease the amount of code that must be newly created and maintained. Functionality has been compartmentalised through a containerized service-based architecture. In this way, new functionality can be added or replaced as needed. To enhance usability, a user may interact with the tool through a browser-based user interface. This paper outlines the features of the Payload Operations Planning Software, as well as details about its architecture and development.
Cost-Effective Payload Operations Planning Software for Complex Small Spacecraft Mission Operations
Utah State University, Logan, UT
As small spacecraft become more capable, so does the complexity of their operations. Searching for potential concurrent observation or access opportunities and ensuring they are compatible with one another may become tedious and repetitive for operators to manually compute. Currently available commercial-off-the-shelf tools that automate this process are capable but expensive. To address this problem, a new payload operations planning tool has been developed by the Space Flight Laboratory to handle the deterministic aspects of mission planning, such as: detecting observation opportunities, validating observations in a schedule, and generating lists of commands to be sent to satellites. This lightweight tool is generalizable to any Earth-observing mission configuration and can support complicated observation geometries. Open-source libraries were used to reduce the overhead for development as they decrease the amount of code that must be newly created and maintained. Functionality has been compartmentalised through a containerized service-based architecture. In this way, new functionality can be added or replaced as needed. To enhance usability, a user may interact with the tool through a browser-based user interface. This paper outlines the features of the Payload Operations Planning Software, as well as details about its architecture and development.
