Development of a mission planning & tasking tool for spacecraft with multiple payloads
CENSSAT-1 which is currently under development within CENSSS hosts 5 different payloads on-board. In order to maximize scientific return and to ensure the success of the mission, a mission planning & tasking tool is required, which will produce the plans based on which the payloads will run on-board the satellite. This tool shall take multiple inputs (from scientific requirements and desired operational aspects of each payload to the orbit of the satellite and its telemetry) and figure out the optimal time to run each payload while also ensuring nominal operations on-board the satellite from a power, data and communications perspective.
Automating spacecraft operations: An ephemeris and TLE generation service for nominal operations and collision avoidance
During the operational phase of a space system, it is important to know where the satellite is in space. To represent the orbits, ephemeris files and two-line element sets (TLEs) are commonly used. These files are produced with sensor measurements: either from space situational tracking networks or if the satellite features a GNSS receiver (which is the case in CENSSAT-1) we can conduct orbit determination based on the data from the GNSS receiver. You will develop a TLE and ephemeris generation service for CENSSAT-1 based on the measurements from the GNSS receiver and use your work to interface with space situational awareness services such as space-track to enable automatic processing and categorization of conjunction detection messages which would enable us to automate part of our operations.
Planning and Building a Ground station for Satellite Communication
To gather data, but also to operate satellites communication infrastructure on the ground is required. While there is a great ground station network provided by KSAT in the arctic regions, it would be beneficial to have access to a local ground station to train students, listen to weather satellites and operate our own satellite, CENSSat-1. In this thesis project you will work with setting up a ground station at ITS, defining requirements, identifying suitable equipment, set up and test and verify the equipment on the top floor and roof of the ITS building. Based on the SatNOGS – Open Source global network of satellite ground-stations project, you should investigate how this system can be extended to facilitate S-band communication, or if a separate setup is necessary.