Digital Commons Network^™

Software-Enabled Smallsat Autonomy: Discussion With Examples, Timothy Woodbury, Austin Probe, Robert Effinger, John Mcgreevy, David Herceg, Matthew Ruschmann, Brett Carver, Timothy Esposito, Graham Bryan

Small Satellite Conference

Smallsat missions using cooperating constellations offer significant benefits compared to traditional space missions. These benefits include lower unit costs, better robustness to failures, and the ability to collect data in a distributed fashion. Significant commercial smallsat missions are active in low Earth orbit, and spacecraft operators have expressed interest in smallsat constellations operating both at higher altitudes and in proximity operations missions. Autonomy plays a significant role in extending smallsat missions to these more challenging domains. Autonomy in a broad sense refers to a spacecraft's or constellation's ability to operate independently of ground systems, and affects every part of a …

Constellation Modelling, Performance Prediction And Operations Management For The Spire Constellation, Jeroen Cappaert, Frantisek Foston, Pablo Sierra Heras, Barry King, Nick Pascucci, Jordan Reilly, Conor Brown, Joey Pitzo, Marcus Tallhamm

Small Satellite Conference

The operational complexity of managing the Spire constellation continually increases with the routine introduction of additional satellites and new capabilities. The heterogeneous nature of the satellites, payloads, and ground station configurations compounds the difficulty of strategic planning and operational scheduling. In order to efficiently operate this diverse network of assets, Spire developed a suite of bespoke constellation modeling and management tools that are designed to support existing demand and to scale for future needs. The modeling tools enable Spire to accurately simulate and optimize the performance of various constellation configurations prior to deployment. The operational tools required to harness the …

How Skywatch Uses Serverless Cloud Computing To Aggregate Eo Data For The Masses, Roland Sing

Small Satellite Conference

Problem

• Petabytes of data to process and distribute
• Pent up demand, bottlenecked by immature industry distribution vehicles and antiquated pricing structures

Goals

• no humans in the loop
• easy consumption of data by beginners and experts alike
• machine to machine focus
• low cost to purchase data
• low cost to operate
• timely processing and delivery (minutes not days)

Mata-Cloud: A Cloud Detection And Dynamic Attitude Correction Evaluation Software, Vanessa Tan, Julie Ann Banatao, John Leur Labrador, Lia Cristina Mabaquiao, Floyd Ferrant Fortes, Marc Caesar Talampas

Small Satellite Conference

With the increasing demand for high-resolution images from earth observation satellites, there is a need to optimize the usability of the images being downloaded in the ground stations. Most captured satellite images are not usable for certain applications due to high cloud cover percentage. To address this problem, this research demonstrates a cloud detection and dynamic attitude correction evaluation software. This software explores two key experiments. First is evaluating different image processing and machine learning-based approaches to detect cloud cover. The cloud detection algorithms were evaluated based on their accuracy, latency, and memory consumption. The second is exploring dynamic attitude …

A New Gigabit Software Modem And Its Cloud Deployment: Concept And Capabilities, Tomislav Nakić-Alfirević

Small Satellite Conference

Software Modem Architecture

Receivers typically have 3 components: a digitizer to digitize the signal, a digital signal processor to demodulate and decode it and a front-end processor to handle frame and packet level processing.

The digitizer receives analogue input, so it has to be a hardware device. Blink implements everything else as high-performance software, making it extremely quick to extend and customise for new missions, as well as cost-competitive. In addition, all 3 components are completely independent an can work together with third party digitizers or modems.

This is only possible because Blink is the fastest software receiver in the …

Low-Power Boards Enabling Ml-Based Approaches To Fdir In Space-Based Applications, James Murphy, John E. Ward, Brian Mac Namee

Small Satellite Conference

Modern satellite complexity is increasing, thus requiring bespoke and expensive on-board solutions to provide a Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) function. Although FDIR is vital in ensuring the safety, autonomy, and availability of satellite systems in flight, there is a clear need in the space industry for a more adaptable, scalable, and cost-effective solution. This paper explores the current state of the art for Machine Learning error detection and prognostic algorithms utilized by both the space sector and the commercial sector. Although work has previously been done in the commercial sector on error detection and prognostics, most commercial applications …