Project description

The HYPSO-2 satellite can use the RGB camera to take captures of the orbital path ahead of itself to take a "Look into the future". The purpose of such an image would be to estimate the cloud cover and use that information to assess if a planned capture with the hyper-spectral imager should be carried out, or if there are too much clouds destroying the value of a capture.

However these maneuvers require energy to conduct. An important question is whether to act on the information gathered in such a lookahead. This requires weighing potential scientific gain (increased image quality/re-scheduled imaging) from maneuvering the satellite to take a capture against the energy that this maneuver would take. The goal of this project is to analyze the energy impact of such maneuvers and come up with a mathematical model that helps deciding when it might be worth it to do such a maneuver. In order to achieve this it will be necessary to estimate the effort of the reaction wheels to get an idea how much such a maneuver "costs" and the potential diminished exposure of the solar panels.

During this project you will learn about

1. Spacecraft Attitude Control Systems
2. Orbital Reference Frames
3. Mission Planning

Readng materials: 

https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/documents/papers/DT-Update-ASTRA-2023.pdf
https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/documents/papers/dt-spaceops-2025.pdf

Energy and time optimal spacecraft attitude control and operations.

Impact

Space technology plays a crucial role in achieving various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN. A GNSS-RFI-payload has the potential to allows us to detect and monitor water vessels at sea and localize GNSS inference sources originating from sea or land. This project target

•     SDG9 Industry, innovation, and infrastructure. The outcomes have an innovative and commercial potential for industry and can contribute both to new space-based infrastructure and protection of existing critical infrastructure beyond GNSS.
•     SDG16 Peace, justice and strong institutions. GNSS interference monitoring is important for protecting essential services and infrastructure, both on a national and international scale.

Tasks and expected outcomes

The student should read and study the requirements and impacts of these maneouvers, and make a trade-off analysis where the cost and benefit can be assessed.

• Investigate theory and the application
• Make a metric for assessing the value and the cost (energy budget)

Who we are looking for

We are seeking a highly motivated final year student in Electronics, Cybernetics or a related field with an interest in space systems, systems engineering and mission design. The student should have analytical skills, and a desire to learn and dive into complicated systems, and be structured and interested in producing text and models for a system design. 

How we work

The student will be part of the NTNU SmallSat lab, a lab which typically hosts 10-20 master's student per semester. At the NTNU SmallSat Lab we encourage collaboration and try to get our group to help each other. To facilitate this, we as well as arrange common lunches and workshops where the students and supervisors can learn from each other. In some project we also implement a development process.