DESCENT: Mission Architecture and Design Overview

Bindra, Udai; Murugathasan, Latheepan; Jain, Vidushi; Zhang, Rongquan; Kang, Junjie; Du, Chonggang; Zhu, Zheng H.; Newland, Franz; Alger, Mike; Shonibare, Oluwatayo; Ruiter, Anton de

doi:10.2514/6.2017-5316

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Prior to the ESSENCE mission, the RACS team were key contributors to the De-orbiting Spacecraft using Electrodynamic Tethers (DESCENT) mission [1] that launched in November 2020. The process followed while developing DESCENT was based largely on the ideas conceived and published by NGC Aerospace for the PROBA program of autonomous satellites outlined in [2] and [3].…”

Section: Design Experience and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After validating that the code compiles as expected, a list of all variables, along with their sizes and data types is generated. 1 Our team has chosen to use Simulink's "Embedded coder" tool over the "Simulink coder" tool for a few aesthetic reasons. Namely, we found the code generation report valuable for evaluating if a change increased or decreased memory usage or made the code either simpler or more complex by checking the code complexity estimate for the step function This list is used to create wrapper code for a freeRTOS task to run the ADCS SW.…”

Section: Real Time Operating System Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attitude Determination And Control System Flight Software Development And Design

Travis¹,

Alger²,

Qureshi³

et al. 2021

Progress in Canadian Mechanical Engineering. Volume 4

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In this paper, the flight software development and design of the attitude determination and control system for the ESSENCE CubeSat mission is documented and discussed. The majority of the software is reused from the DESCENT mission, which was previously written by the RACS team, with strong inspiration from NGC Aerospace's work on the PROBA satellite program. The paper highlights the benefits of reusable software modules and methodologies between projects. Finally, it is encouraged that similar processes be considered by other CCP teams developing ADCS systems for future missions.

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Section: Design Experience and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Real Time Operating System Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitude Determination And Control System Flight Software Development And Design

Travis¹,

Alger²,

Qureshi³

et al. 2021

Progress in Canadian Mechanical Engineering. Volume 4

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“…This will generate a Lorentz force that will help deorbit the satellites. DESCENT will be a first of its kind to test the technology in orbit [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical Implementation of Test-As-You-Fly for the DESCENT CubeSat Mission

Jain

Bindra

Murugathasan

et al. 2018

2018 SpaceOps Conference

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DESCENT is a CubeSat mission that will demonstrate the potential for electrodynamic tethers to deorbit small spacecraft from Low Earth Orbits. The space segment, consists of two 1U CubeSats that are planned for launch from the International Space Station in Q2 2019, from where they will be inserted into orbit. For launch and early operations, the two spacecraft will be held together by a tensioned wire. The spacecraft will not perform any operation for the first 30 minutes after ejection from the station, to avoid any interference with ISS operations. After a link to ground has been established and initial housekeeping tasks are performed, the tensioned wire will be cut allowing the two cubes to separate. The two cubes are connected with a 100 m-long tape tether. The tether is attached to a Spindt array on one of the CubeSats, which will be enabled post-tether-deployment to eject the collected electrons back into the plasma. This will generate a Lorentz force that will help deorbit the satellite. This paper highlights the operation sequence and an optimal system test procedure for a pre-test-campaign validation process of the DESCENT mission.

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