PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
The objective of the project is, building on the Inmarsat 4 experience, to improve the system performance in order to meet more stringent pointing requirements of large deployable reflectors (12 m), in particular by introducing electronic beam steering compensation. The first application of this enhanced pointing system will be on Alphasat.
Challenges
Major system design aspects to be investigated are:
- Enhancement of the attitude determination algorithm to improve resilience to noise,
- Enhancement of the control loop robustness to transient events (increasing the bandwidth) and achieve better pointing performance,
- Specification of the measurement devices,
- Specification of beacon locations and separation to improve the measurement accuracy.
Plan
The following activities have been performed as part of the project :
- definition and simulation of the major blocks of the system
- definition of specifications for ground system components
The project has been concluded by the in-orbit validation of the system on Alphasat.
Current Status
All activities have now been successfully completed :
– Design and simulation activities
– Ground system components specification
– Ground Software development
– End to end systems tests with the satellite
– In-Orbit Tests and verification of performances
Companies
