Systems Engineering Challenges in Realizations of Spinning Satellite Versus Rotating Payload to Improve Systems Reliability

Abstract

Satellites are playing vital role in the astronomical study by scientific community. Whereas making a bigger satellite, catering complex mission requirement for scientific study is not viable due to huge realization duration and launch cost. Configurations of astronomical study satellites are quite different compared to earth observation satellites, in such a way that payloads of former may demand rotating mechanisms. A cost effective spinning satellite configuration is studied to meet the payload rotation requirement for space astronomy exploration. On the other hand, accomplishing the essential requirements is a challenge viz. power generation, stringent payload pointing, attitude updates, telecommand establishment, telemetry links, visibility to data reception ground station for a spinning satellite. This paper is intended to bring out the complexity involved and the systems engineering concepts adopted to achieve the mission goal, mainframe elements redundancy, positive energy balance and high systems reliability to build a cost effective spinning small satellite.