A novel astronomical application for formation flying small satellites

OLFAR, Orbiting Low Frequency Antennas for Radio Astronomy, will be a space mission to observe the universe frequencies below 30 MHz, as it was never done before with an orbiting telescope. Because of the ionospheric scintillations below 30 MHz and the opaqueness of the ionosphere below 15 MHz, a space mission is the only opportunity for this as yet unexplored frequency range in radio astronomy. The frequency band is scientifically very interesting for exploring the early cosmos at high hydrogen redshifts, the so-called dark-ages and the epoch of reionization, the discovery of planetary and solar bursts in other solar systems, for obtaining a tomographic view of space weather, ultra-high energy cosmic rays and for many other astronomical areas of interest. Because of the low observing frequency the aperture size of the instrument must be in the order of 100 km. This requires a distributed space mission which is proposed to be implemented using formation flying of small satellites. The individual satellites are broken down in five major subsystems: the spacecraft bus, the antenna design, the frontend, backend and data transport. One of the largest challenges is the inter-satellite communication. In this paper the concept and design considerations of OLFAR are presented

An extensive and autonomous deep space navigation system using radio pulsars

Interstellar navigation poses significant challenges in all aspects of a spacecraft. One of them is reliable, low-cost, real-time navigation, especially when there is a considerable distance between Earth and the spacecraft in question. In this paper, a complete system for navigation using pulsar radio emissions is described and analysed. The system uses a pulsar‟s emissions in the radio spectrum to create a novel system capable of fully autonomous navigation. The system is roughly divided into two parts, the front - end and the back - end, as well as their subdivisions. The front - end performs initial signal reception and pre-processing. It applies time-based coherent de-dispersion to allow for low-power on-board processing, and uses a very wide bandwidth to limit the required antenna size. As a result, the electronics required performing the processing is complex, but the system is well limited in both size and power consumption

Using a satellite swarm for building a space-based radio telescope for low frequencies

In radio astronomy, as in astronomy in general, a wide range of frequencies is observed as each spectral band o_ers a unique window to study astrophysical phenomena. In the recent years, new observatories have been designed and built at the extreme limits of the radio spectrum. For the low frequencies several Earth-based radio telescopes are constructed at this moment. In the Netherlands, the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is being constructed at this moment and will be operational later this year. LOFAR observes the sky between 30 and 240 MHz. Observing at even lower frequencies is very interesting, but, due to the inuence of the Earth's ionosphere this is not possible from Earth. Thus, the only option to observe low frequencies is a telescope in spac

OLFAR - orbiting low frequency array; using a satellite swarm for building a space-based radio telescope for low frequencies

In radio astronomy, as in astronomy in general, a wide range of frequencies is observed as each spectral band offers a unique window to study astrophysical phenomena. In the recent years, new observatories have been designed and built at the extreme limits of the radio spectrum. For the low frequencies several Earth-based radio telescopes are constructed at this moment. In the Netherlands, the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is being constructed at this moment and will be operational later this year. LOFAR observes the sky between 30 and 240 MHz. Observing at even lower frequencies is very interesting, but, due to the influence of the Earth’s ionosphere this is not possible from Earth. Thus, the only option to observe low frequencies is a telescope in space

A novel emergency system for low earth orbit satellites using Galileo GNSS

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have a limited direct contact time with the stations of their ground segment. This fundamentally constraints a timeliness reaction of the mission control center in case of emergency situations onboard the LEO spacecraft. To enable such a rapid reaction to emergency situations onboard LEO satellites, it is proposed to use a Search and Rescue (SAR) beacon onboard that spacecraft to transmit an alert message via Galileo satellites which support SAR through the Cospas-Sarsat (C/S) system to the satellite mission control center. While SAR up to now is limited to terrestrial, maritime, and aviation user scenarios, this space user concept presents a novel emergency system which helps facilitating the valuable space assets which LEO satellites in many cases represent. However, such a space user system faces various technical, system, and business challenges as well as legal and regulatory issues. The frequency band assigned for the SAR system is limited to low power satellite emergency position-indicating radio beacons and is foreseen for earth-space transmissions only. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should agree on opening this band for space-space communication for space user distress beacons. The Distress Alerting Satellite System (DASS) and the SAR/Glonass system will also operate in this band and an agreement will be required for these as well. A visibility analysis is presented for LEO to Galileo satellites. Depending on the placement of the antenna of the distress beacon on the LEO spacecraft, between 6 and 21 Galileo satellites are visible. The space user beacon may cause interference to the current SAR system when it’s signals collide with those of Earth-bound users in time or overlap in frequency at the Galileo transponder. When they collide in time one of the signals might still be processed if one of the signal levels is significantly higher than the other. Upon sharing the same frequency, both signals could be lost in a worst case scenario. This overlap in frequency can be caused by Doppler shifts. Therefore, a Doppler analysis was performed and Doppler shifts of about ?11 kHz were identified. Next to frequency overlaps the traffic load in the adjacent channels can increase. Different methods to prevent these Doppler shifts were analyzed. To reduce system complexity and benefit from existing technology, the space user beacon could be similar to that of an Earth beacon. However, the repetition time could be increased and the frequency channel selected for the Doppler analysis is chosen such that the interference is minimal. A high level design of the SAR payload onboard the LEO satellite was performed and different protocol options were valuated.Space EngineeringAerospace Engineerin

Magnetic Detumbling of Fast-tumbling Picosatellites

The problem of pure magnetic detumbling of a fast-tumbling picosatellite is considered. A new weighted B-dot control algorithm is proposed. The algorithm enables power reduction while not sacrificing detumbling performance. Analytical expressions relating the maximal expected rotational rate to the minimum sampling time required are presented. Simulation results demonstrate the practical benefits of the proposed approach for picosatellites.Space Systems EgineeringSpace Engineerin

Relative state estimation and observability for formation flying satellites in the presence of sensor noise

This paper presents an investigation into the relative state estimation and observability for two formation flying satellites using two different relative navigation sensor sets. The first set consists out of a transmitter antenna on one satellite and a single receiver antenna on the other satellite to measure the inter-satellite range using a radiofrequency ranging signal. The second set uses three receiver antennas to measure multiple ranges, effectively providing angular information. It is derived in the paper that for the more complete sensor set, the error in the estimation of the relative state is a function of the pseudorange error, the inter-satellite distance, and the receiver antenna baselines. By varying these variables, conditions are found for which the observations obtained using the first sensor set result in relative state estimation and observability comparable to those obtained with the more complete sensor set. This offers potential reductions in cost and complexity for certain mission scenarios.Space EngineeringAerospace Engineerin

Preliminary Analysis of a Novel SAR Based Emergency System for Earth Orbit Satellites using Galileo

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of a novel Search and Rescue (SAR) based emergency system for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites using the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). It starts with a description of the space user SAR system including a concept description, mission architecture and legal and regulatory aspects. This is followed by a visibility and interference analysis and a high level payload design will be presented.Space EngineeringAerospace Engineerin

Snapshot GNSS receivers for low-effort, high-gain space situational awareness

This paper proposes a novel concept of using highly efficient Snapshot Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers to provide precise position fixes of single or multiple satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to improve upper atmospheric modeling and thus contribute to superior space situational awareness (SSA). While tracking of LEO satellites and the use of onboard GNSS receivers for drag measurements and upper atmosphere modeling are well-established techniques, the expected advent of snapshot GNSS receivers for spaceborne scientific applications will allow massive improvements on the GNSS sensor's Size, Weight, Power and Cost (SWaP-C). With chip-size dimensions of 4x4 mm2, a mass of less than 5 gr, an average power level below 0.1 mW, snapshot receiver technology is expected to provide position fixes in space with an accuracy of ∼19 m (3D r.m.s.), which will surpass the accuracy of Two-Line Elements (TLE) provided by the US Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) by at least two orders of magnitude. Equally important to their SWaP-C benefits, Snapshot GNSS receivers will allow mission and spacecraft designers to trade onboard-processing requirements versus payload downlink requirements, leading to either minimum onboard processing or a minimum amount of downlinked data. In this research, we establish the concept and architectural overview of using snapshot GNSS receivers for SSA, including the role of using them in a Distributed Space System (DSS), and detail their characterization and performance in terms of the required GNSS hardware and the impact of these payload on the power budget, the link budget and the OnBoard Data Handling (OBDH) budget of a satellite. It will be shown that these receivers lend themselves especially to their use on femto-, pico- and nano-satellites, although integrated snapshot modules may be flown as auxiliary payloads on micro- or mini-satellites as well. While this work focuses on the implications of the use of snapshot GNSS receivers on spacecraft design for the use of upper atmosphere modeling and SSA, their use may open up other science applications which avoid the need for expensive high-grade GNSS receivers.Space Systems Egineerin

Effects of Saturation for High-Throughput Satellite Buses

Bus saturation is deemed as one of the primary causes of delays in the data propagation between spacecraft components. However, the conditions under which bus congestion can affect measurements variability were not well characterized before. This paper presents a bus saturation model and a set of experiments to characterize the bus performance of satellite missions for different traffic load, data rate, and synchronization periods. The results showed an increase of measurements variance of up to 18% caused by bus saturation. Additionally, an algorithm was proposed to reduce the data delay by controlling the saturation on the communication channel at the operational level.</p