Speaker
Mr
Joris Naudet
(QinetiQ Space)
Description
The PROBA satellite series, developed by QinetiQ Space for the European Space Agency’s, represent a benchmark in the small satellites domain. Meanwhile, the PROBA platform accumulated over 25 years in orbit, without failure on any of the launched satellites. With the latest mission, PROBA-V, QinetiQ Space also demonstrated the platform has evolved to a fully operational platform; after its successful commissioning, PROBA-V now serves as an operational Earth observation mission to provide continuity in vegetation data, which were previously delivered by CNES’ SPOT 4 and SPOT 5.
One of the salient features of the PROBA satellites is that they are constantly at the technology forefront in the implementation, to unprecedented levels, of onboard autonomy in platform and payload management, as well as of automation in the platform and payload ground management and operations. The level of autonomy implemented in the satellites onboard software in payload, mission and system resource management functions and in GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control), has increasingly demonstrated, across the last 15 years, to allow onboard detailed planning and execution of operational scenarios. This eliminates the need for detailed onground mission planning and for hundreds of commands to be sent to the flight segment only to perform nominal scientific observations. These functions include the capability of complex reconfigurations in case of system non-nominal behaviours, maximising the availability of the platform and the mission scientific return with no need for ground intervention and with extended periods without contact with the control centre.
With a total of more than 25 years of PROBA combined operations experience (against a total combined originally expected lifetime of 5-8 years), the PROBA satellites have redefined the meaning of autonomous operations proving that, applying onboard and onground autonomy also complex, high-demanding missions can be performed by a small satellite, with a required mission operations effort strongly reduced with respect to more classical approaches.
Primary authors
Mr
Dennis Gerrits
(QinetiQ Space)
Mr
Joris Naudet
(QinetiQ Space)
Mr
Peter Holsters
(Qinetiq Space)
Mr
Stijn Ilsen
(QinetiQ Space)
