AE3211-I Spacecraft Group Tutorial Execution Regular (2024) Date: March 2024

Author: Dr.B.V.S.Jyoti

AE3211-I Systems Engineering and Aerospace Design

Spacecraft Tutorial Assignment Regular (2024)
Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem for a Mars Orbiter

Instructions
This document provides you with all the necessary information you will need to execute the Spacecraft
Tutorial. Read this entire document carefully before the tutorial week.

When you need additional information, it may be helpful to look into the lecture slides of this or
previous courses. You may also consult the textbook of Wertz J.R., Larson W.J.; “Space Mission
Analysis and Design”, Third Edition; Microcosm, Inc. (1999). Finally, you can consult the internet.
However, you must document in your tutorial execution report all sources of information you have
used.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The tutorial does NOT represent an exercise to prepare for the exam. Tutorial and
exam are two separate assessments that cover different learning objectives. Instead, the tutorial
allows you to apply what you have learned from this and previous courses and prepares you for the
Design Synthesis Exercise (DSE).

Project and Task Description

Background
Mars is the 4th planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the solar System after Mercury.
It is also known as “Red Planet”, because the reddish iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a
reddish appearance that is distinctive among the astronomical bodies visible to the naked eye. Mars is
a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact
craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth. The rotational period and
seasonal cycles are somewhat similar to those of Earth. Mars has 2 moons, which are small and
irregular shaped. Mars is of great interest for our scientists, therefore lots of efforts are ongoing
investigating assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life.

Mission
Your mission is triggered by the need to provide a complete mapping of the surface of Mars, including
parts of the planet that have not been mapped so far by other missions. The required spatial resolution
for this mapping shall be at least 12 meters. This ambitious mission objective will be accomplished by
means of a spacecraft orbiting at a relatively low altitude around Mars (<600km).

Project
The day of the Preliminary Requirements Review (PRR) has now come. All members of your team have
to work together. Answer the project key questions as a team (not individually!):

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AE3211-I Spacecraft Group Tutorial Execution Regular (2024) Date: March 2024
Author: Dr.B.V.S.Jyoti

a. What is your set of validated ADCS system requirements and how will each requirement be
verified?
b. What is your preliminary architecture for the ADCS fulfilling your requirements? (i.e. which
and how many sensors and actuators do you use, how are they connected?).
c. What is your preliminary mass and power budget for the ADCS?

In addition, during the PRR, a Requirements Change or Design Change is given by the customer. You
are required to iterate or react to the given change and provide an explanation regarding the impact
of the individual changes on the system design. Make sure to describe both the baseline results and
the results from the first iteration. Thus, a first iteration on the ADCS architecture concept is expected
to take place, based on the feedback received from the customer (European Space Agency).

Task 1 for the Group Tutorial Execution

1. Set up the team, organize the group work and define the responsibilities of each team
member. Possible assigned responsibilities are: who will act as a Team Leader? Who will
moderate the discussion? Who will find the necessary documentation and references? Who
will write the tutorial report? Who will ensure that execution of the different tasks stays within
the allocated time schedule? Document these responsibilities in your report. (Expected effort
for this task: 10 minutes).

Task 2 for the Group Tutorial Execution

1. Familiarize with the task at hand and collect key information that could be used for the task.
2. Compute the required attitude control accuracy from the mission needs and, discuss key
drivers for altitude, suggest a suitable altitude range compatible to the given low altitude
requirement. Show your calculation and motivate your answer.
3. Derive the key system requirements for the ADCS. Be sure to adhere to the instructions in the
lecture on how to write appropriate requirements. Limit yourself to less than 10 requirements.
Think systems! Validate the requirements and explain how you verified the key requirements!
4. Develop system criteria for the trade-off selection of the ADCS. Motivate why these criteria
have been selected and how they relate to one another.
5. Select an ADCS system based on the requirements given in the mission description, and discuss
the key drivers for its selection by means of a Trade-off Matrix. Consider for this trade-off the
criteria which you defined in tasks 2.2-2.4.
6. Consider appropriate sensors and actuators which could be used as elements in your ADCS.
There are various ways to do that: look into lecture slides and/or textbooks for examples or
look at the Internet for comparable missions and their components.
7. Sketch the architecture of your ADCS. Be sure that your architecture complies with the nominal
mission operations and requirements.
8. Draft a mass budget for your ADCS by considering commercial off-the-shelf components or
components used by previous similar missions.
9. And determine a very rough estimate of the spacecraft dry mass.
10. Document your work and findings in a tutorial execution report. Include ALL sources of
information you used. Also, document the assumptions that you have made.
Briefly analyze the outcomes of the group work based on the assigned task to each teammate within
the group. Identify the common points and the eventual conflicts between the preliminary ADCS
system requirements, architectures, mass budget elaborated by the team members.

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AE3211-I Spacecraft Group Tutorial Execution Regular (2024) Date: March 2024
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Task 3 for the Group Tutorial Execution

1. Harmonize the outcomes of the group work from all team members to derive a consolidated
set of ADCS system requirements, architecture, and mass budget from the team as a whole.
2. You will receive the feedback from the customer on Brightspace at 16:00hrs on 05.04.2024.

Task 4 for the Group Tutorial Execution

1. Based on the feedback that you will receive from the customer during the PRR; The so-called
Requirements Change or Design Change, iterate your preliminary design concept and
eventually obtain a revised one, which will represent the final outcome of your tutorial work.
This means that you are expected to revise the main points from Task 2.

Task 5 for the Group Tutorial Execution

1. Document your work in a tutorial report, including a detailed description of both the first and
second (final) iteration of the design concept. Clearly explain the logical flow, which has been
followed for modifying the first concept in order to get to the final one. Specify ALL sources of
information used and document ALL the assumptions made throughout the work.

Task 6 for the Group Tutorial Execution

1. Revisit the group organization and team roles assigned in Task 1. Reflect on how these have
helped you to execute this assignment (i.e., Were all roles useful? Which roles would you
add/remove if you were to do this again? How did the group organization affect your work?).
(This task should not take up more than half a page)

Note: task 5 will run in parallel to tasks 2-4!!

Deliverable and pass requirements

Each group must deliver a group tutorial report as an electronic file. The file format and the exact
location where it shall be uploaded will be mentioned on Brightspace. The general requirements for
the report contents are:
• The report must provide clear evidence that you have dealt with all of the above stated tasks.
• The report must answer your findings from above tasks #1 to #4.
• The report must have a length of 5 pages at minimum. It should not have more than
10 pages. Table of contents and bibliography count towards the page count. A
dedicated title page and appendices are not counted towards these page limits.
• The report must represent a group work. The individual contributions from all members of the
group shall be documented and present in it. All members of the group shall agree with all
parts of the report.
• The report shall, on the front page, clearly indicate the names and associated student numbers
of all the members of the group. The report will be graded as a group work, and this grade will
represent the baseline for your tutorial grade. Also, if the individual contributions aren’t
balanced, points will be deducted from the group tutorial grade.
• The report shall be graded for the following criteria:
1. Completeness of the required tasks.
2. Correctness of the design.
3. Consistency (in design process, assumptions, and analysis)
4. Adherence to the material taught to you in this course.

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5. Layout (clear and concise report desirable; well-explained diagrams)