Thomas Terzibaschian

Robust and Fault Tolerant AOCS of the TET Satellite

The chapter presents the design of the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) of the small satellite TET-1 (Technology verification career) as an example of a cost effective but still robust and reliable AOCS for small satellites. The AOCS of TET-1 is fully three-axis stabilized. Particular attention is paid to the implementation of robust and fault tolerant design of the AOCS. The redundancy management concept and robust control algorithms are presented. Furthermore the fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) mechanism, which are implemented in various functional levels, are shown. Finally the chapter presents the test strategy for verifying the proposed fault tolerant design.

Robustness as Key to Success for Space Missions

To lead space missions to a success requires a high degree of autonomous intelligence in software and highly reliable hardware. In particular, all software and hardware components should be robust against failures, inexact measurement of data, and, ideally, unforeseen events. This chapter provides an introduction to the demanding conditions in the space environment and describes measures in hardware and software and their testing that are necessary for the development of robust systems for space missions.

Lessons Learned from the Object-Oriented Design of the BIRD Attitude Control System Software

Abstract We give an insight in the software architecture and the object oriented development method of the attitude control system for the Bird microsatellite. Further we show how the unified modelling language is used to described the software design and the developed design patterns