Description:
The Research component of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Class Grant and Contribution Program to support Research, Awareness and Learning in Space Science and Technology provides financial support to organizations to conduct space related research and development in priority areas. It will support targeted knowledge development and innovation to sustain and enhance the Canadian capacity to use space to address national needs and priorities in the future.
More specifically, this project entitled "" High Accuracy, High Agility Attitude Determination and Control System for Earth Satellite "" has the objective (s):
The proposed work intends to further advance Canada's capability in this field especially for High Accuracy and High Agility (HAHA) missions.
At Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) software level:
• Pointing accuracy can be improved by reducing the error between the estimated and the true orientation; the error between the desired target and on-board computed target; the error between the target and the true orientation; the stability of the pointing over a specific time window.
• Agility can be improved by optimising the utilisation of available actuators and by designing optimal guidance laws.
NGC identified Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) solutions that can significantly improve the pointing accuracy and agility of spacecraft. Thus, the project aims at the design and validation of innovative GNC functions required to provide high accuracy and high agility capabilities to meet the demanding payload requirements of future Earth satellites.
This project will design, implement in a high fidelity simulator and assess the performance of the new algorithms using as reference missions the PROBA-3 mission and the PROBA-NEXT mission which represents the next missions requiring non-existing (or low-TRL) HAHA technologies.