Mission Design & Analysis Tool (MDAAT)

The Operational Responsive Space effort requires design aids to speed up the process of designing the mission. Typically, mission simulations use 3DOF simulations such as the COTs software STK and 'Free Flyer'. The Air Force uses these simulations to define Mission Requirements. Unfortunately, these requirements may be overly optimistic because they did not include the physics associated with attitude control such as spacecraft inertial and reaction wheel torque and momentum limits. For example, the ORMSB / TacSat3 procurement initially required a 3 deg/sec slew rate. However, halfway into the procurement phase, it became obvious that this was not possible given the spacecraft constraints and available reaction wheels. These results were brought to light via simulation and analysis with the Spacecraft Design Tool (SDT). SDT implemented in the Responsive Space Test Bed providing the high fidelity real-time 6dof simulations. Star Technologies Proposes to develop wizards to support the Mission Designers that will help them select realistic designs and evaluate them on SDT