the eseo mission: current status and achievements · 2015-04-30 · the eseo mission: current...

The ESEO mission: current

status and achievements

Nicola Melega1, Paolo Tortora1,2, Fabrizio Giulietti2,

Piero Galeone3, Antonio De Luca3

Davide Bruzzi ESEO Mission Implementation Manager

1 SITAEL S.p.A., 2University of Bologna, 3ESA-ESTEC

Outline

• The ESEO Program

• SITAEL S.p.A.

• ESEO in Brief

• Current status and achievements

– Launcher and orbit

– The ESEO spacecraft

– The ESEO spacecraft functional block diagram

– ESEO technology demonstrators

– ESEO AIV Plan

– ESEO Ground Segment

– Education activities

• Conclusions and future activities

10th IAA Symposium on Small Satellites for Earth Observation April 20 - 24, 2015 Berlin, Germany

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The ESEO Program

• The ESEO Program is financed and

technically supported by the ESA

Education and Knowledge

Management Office reporting to the

Cabinet of the ESA Director General

(DGC-DE)

• The satellite is mainly developed by

students preparing their Master or

PhD thesis supported by ESA experts

• ECSS standards are considered as

reference documentation


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SITAEL S.p.A.


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• SITAEL S.p.A. belongs to the holding Angelo

Investments, a worldwide leading Transportation

and Aerospace Group composed by synergic

high-tech companies with more than 1000 highly

skilled employees.

• SITAEL, ALTA and ALMASpace, the three space

companies of Angelo Investments Group,

completed the process of merging into a single

company on December 31st, 2014.

• In the context of the ESEO Program,

ALMASpace is the prime contractor and

responsible for the mission implementation.

ESEO in brief - 1

• ESEO is the third mission managed by

the ESA’s Education and Knowledge

Management Office and builds upon

the experience gained with SSETI

Express (launched in 2005) and the

YES2 tether and re-entry capsule

experiment (launched in 2007);

• The project is currently at the end of

Phase C, the detailed design stage,

with students actively involved from

eight universities across all Europe;

• The ESEO spacecraft is to be launched

into Low Earth Orbit in 2016.

SSET

I Exp

ress

Y

ES2


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ESEO in brief - 2


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• ESEO Program Organization Chart:

ESEO in brief - 3


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Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Tritel Dosimeter (TRITEL)

University of Vigo

UHF Ground Station #2 (GSV)

Technical Univ. of Delft

ADCS S/W Experiment (ADE)

Cranfield University

De-Orbiting Mechanism (DOM)

AMSAT-UK

Educational HR Payload (AMSAT)

Technical Univ. of Munich

S-band Ground Station (GSM)

Wroclaw Univ. of Technology

S-Band TX (HSTX)

Budapest University

of Technology and Economics

Langmuir Probe (LMP) &

Power Distribution Unit (PDU)

University of Bologna

GPS Receiver, UHF Ground Station #1 (GSF)

Mission Control Centre (MCC)

Tartu Observatory

Optical Payload (CAM)

• ESEO University Network:

Launcher and Orbit - 1

• Launcher: VEGA is considered the baseline but

additional launchers are possible alternative candidates.

ESA is in the process to select a suitable launch vehicle.

• Orbit: The target is a circular Sun-Synchronous Orbit

(SSO), 10:30 LTAN with an altitude of 523 km.

• Attitude: Nadir-pointing attitude has been selected as a

baseline for nominal operations.

• Mission profile: The identified orbit produces a cycle of

106 orbits in a week, about 15 orbit per day, in order to

complete the coverage of the selected areas of interest

(Europe and South Atlantic Anomaly). The definition of

the areas of interest was driven by the optical payload

and the scientific instruments requirements.


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Launcher and Orbit - 2

• Coverage of the areas of interest:


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The ESEO Spacecraft - 1

• The ESEO Platform: Platform subsystems and units are

installed inside the ESEO BUS Module


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Top Plate:

Telemetry and Telecommand (TMTC) AntennaGPS Payload Antenna

AMSAT Payload AntennaSun Sensor Main (SS)Sun Sensor Red (SS)

EGSE/Umbilical Connector

Tray 6:

Telemetry and Telecommand (TMTC)

Tray 5:

GPSMagnetometer Main (MM)Magnetometer Red (MM)Tray 4:

On-Board Data Handling (OBDH) Tray 3:

Power Distribution Unit (PDU)Power anagement Board (PMB)

Battery Packs (BP)

Tray 2:

Momentum Wheel Main (MWM)Momentum Wheel Red (MWR)

Magnetorquers Y (MT) Tray 1:

Micropropulsion System (MPS)Lateral Panels:

Solar Arrays (SA) Payload module:

Earth Sensor (ES)Micropropulsion System Pressure Vessel (MPV)

The ESEO Spacecraft - 2

• The ESEO Payload Complement: payloads provided by the

university network are installed inside the ESEO Payload Module.


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Top Plate:

GPS AntennaAMSAT Antenna

Tray 5:

GPS

Sector 4:

TRITELLMP LCB

Sector 2:

ESMT X & Z

Panel 2:

DOM

Bottom Plate:

LMP LDEES

HSTX AntennaTRITELCAM

Sector 3:

AMSATHSTX

HSTX Antenna

Sector 1:

MPS TankCAM

The ESEO Spacecraft functional block diagram

• ESEO Functional Block Diagram: fully redundant platform


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ESEO technology demonstrators

• At platform level the following items are

implemented as in-orbit technological

demonstrators:

– In house developed cold-gas micro-propulsion

subsystem

– In house developed momentum wheel

– Integrated Current Limiter for power distribution unit

(ESA CFI)

– Integrated Single Event Latch-up protection for digital

devices (present in particular in OBDH and TMTC

subsystems)


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ESEO AIV Plan

• The model philosophy foresees Elegant Breadboard

(EBB) and Proto-flight models (PFM)

• EBBs implemented with COTS components and going to

face qualification tests (including environmental)

• Confidence tests (VFT) are performed before CDR


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Confidence tests

• A set of electrical and functional confidence tests

(included in the VFT category) were agreed with

ESA and successfully completed

• The following verifications were performed: – Envelope and mass measurement, mechanical interface

check;

– Signals verification on electrical interfaces (power supply,

CAN, RS-232/RS-422/RS-485, pulse command, dedicated

data I/F);

– Power consumption measurement, including in-rush

current, ripple and DC-DC secondary output measurement

in idle and working conditions;

– Over-voltage protection circuit activation on secondary

power buses;

– Pulse command interface (inhibit, reset, re-programming

mode) verification.

• Tests have been repeated at -25°C and 70°C

• TID and SEE tests were performed on the

selected microcontroller


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Confidence tests on payloads EBB models

• DOM performed more than 20 successful

consecutive deployments after environmental

testing

• GPS successfully completed verification

functional test and interface check including a

specific test campaign at ESA-ESTEC

dedicated to the verification of the two

redundant front-ends

• TRITEL unit successfully completed electrical

and functional tests at ambient, minimum and

maximum temperatures

• HSTX completed several transmission tests in

order to verify data-rates, bandwidth and power

consumption at the different operational modes

• ADE completed algorithms coding, test on the

OBDH hardware representative model and

measurement of the performance

• AMSAT successfully completed electrical

verification and functional tests

10th IAA Symposium on Small Satellites for Earth Observation

April 20 - 24, 2015 Berlin, Germany 16

ESEO Ground Segment

• ESEO GS is composed by:

– Mission Control Center (including main telemetry and telecommand ground-

station, located in Forli (Italy)

– Telemetry and telecommand backup ground-station located in Vigo (Spain)

– S-band downlink ground-station for scientific data located in Munich (Germany)

• Additional components:

– SATNET network coordinated by CalPoly (USA)

– AMSAT community


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Backup TTC GS(Vigo)

TC Packets (UHF Band)

HK TM Packets (UHF band)TC Ack Packets (UHF band)

Payloads Planning

ESEO MCC

Primary TTC GS(Forli)

ESEO



Payloads Ancilliary TM Packets (UHF band)Payload Data Reception GS

(Munich)

User Segment

Pass Planning (SATNET)

Science Data Downlink Report (SATNET)

Science Data file (SATNET)

Payloads Requests (FTP)

Payloads Request Status (FTP)Pass Planning (FTP)

Current activities on GS

• Consolidation of MCC interfaces, protocols

and data-rates

• Preparation of operational procedures

• Communication tests

• SATNET operational test campaign carried

out at the end of January 2015 to support

the LEOP phase in the context of the NASA

ELANA X launch.


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Backup TTC GS(Vigo)

Primary TTC GS(Forli)

ESEO

TC Packets(UHF Band)


Payloads Ancilliary TM Packets (UHF band)

Payload Data Reception GS(Munich)

Onboard Control Procedure

ESEOMission Control Center

Platform Engineer

ESEOMaintenance Center

(ALMASpace)

GS Operator

TLE Provider Site

User Segment

TC Packets (RF link)

HK TM Packets (RF link)TC Ack Packets (RF link)

Payload Ancilliary TM Packets (RF link)



Payload Ancilliary TM Packets (UHF band)

TC Packets (SATNET)Operational Pass Planning (SATNET)

HK TM Packets (SATNET)TC Ack Packets (SATNET)

Payload Ancilliary TM Packets (SATNET)

Operational Pass Planning(SATNET)

TM Report Request(email)

TM Report (email)

Onboard Control Procedure(email)

Science Data DownlinkReport (SATNET)

Science Data file (SATNET)

ESEO TLE files(HTTPS)

Operational Pass Planning (FTP/SATNET)Payload Request Status Report (FTP)

TLE (FTP)

Payload Request (FTP)

Payloads Science TM packets (S band)

Educational activities

• Lecture and Training Courses, and

Internship opportunities were

organized and conducted at

system level at the UniBO and

System Prime premises for 60

students selected from the

University Network

• About 200 students are

collaborating to ESEO at different

levels of involvement, most of

them from the premises of all

university teams involved in the

project

• In January 2015 the last group of

ESEO students joined UniBO and

ALMASpace/SITAEL for their

internship period


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Conclusions and future activities

• The ESEO program is now at the end of phase C1, going to close

the CDR process with CDR board chaired by the ESA Inspector

General

• About 200 students have been actively involved in the ESEO

program, 60 of them participated in lecture and training courses as

well as a four weeks internship period at the prime contractor

premises

• Most of the spacecraft units and payloads have been successfully

manufactured and tested in their EBB models confirming the robust

design

• The program is now approaching an intense and challenging AIV

phase

• Follow the ESEO updates on:

http://www.esa.int/Education/European_Student_Earth_Orbiter


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Contacts

Davide Bruzzi

ESEO Mission Implementation

Manager [email protected]

SITAEL S.p.A. Via Filippo Guarini,13

47121 Forli (FC) - ITALY

Via San Sabino, 21

70042 Mola di Bari (BA) – ITALY

Tel: +39 080 5321796

Fax: +39 080 5355048

www.sitael.com


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Thank you for your kind attention

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.sitael.com/

the eseo mission: current status and achievements · 2015-04-30 · the eseo mission: current...

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