National Space Technology Programme · Space Technology Programme (NSTP-2) study to develop low-cost GNC and sensor architectures for future RDV&D missions. The baseline mission concept,

NationalSpaceTechnologyProgramme

A capability programme encouraging the development of space technology in the UK space sector.

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UK SPACE AGENCY: NATIONAL SPACE TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMME

CONTENTS

Programme Overview

Access to space

Sensing

Positioning, Navigation and Timing

Exploration and Robotics

Telecomms

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DEVELOPING SPACE TECHNOLOGY IN THE UK

The UK Space Agency particularly likes to encourage organisations (industry, academia and SMEs) new to space technology to participate in GEI calls.

Example activities are early TRL innovation, new technology concepts, knowledge transfer, skills development, refining an idea, undertaking a market survey and proof of Concept.

Pathfinder projects will normally last 6 months; receiving a grant of up to £50k. They typically developing to technology readiness level (TRL) 2-3. Collaboration is encouraged on projects and should remain within the NSTP objectives. Example activities are fundamental research, feasibility studies and industrial research. Example activities are fundamental research, feasibility studies and industrial research.

Fast Track projects normally last 12 months; receiving a grant of up to £150k. These should be of the highest technical quality and be highly innovative. Again, collaboration is encouraged and should remain within the NSTP objectives. Example activities are feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development. Example activities are feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development.

Flagship projects normally run over 2 years; receiving a grant of up to £1 million. These should develop technologies to a high TRL (typically 5 or above), offer a significant commercial opportunity and have a clear exploitation route to market.

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The National Space Technology Programme is a capability programme encouraging the development of space technology in the UK space sector.

The UK Space Agency’s aim is to drive growth into the UK economy by supporting the development of space technology and skills, as embodied in the UK Space, Innovation and Growth Strategy (Space IGS).

NSTP offers support by funding industry, academia and other (not for profit) government institutions, who are looking to develop technology and build new capabilities for the UK Space sector. NSTP offers funding opportunities for projects across all ranges, from startup companies to more established industry. We encourage collaboration on projects both large and small, inspiring new and existing industries to develop and contribute to the growth of the UK economy.

The NSTP funds four types of grants, Flagships, Fastracks, Pathfinder and Grants for Exploratory Ideas. The NSTP team will co-ordinate and oversee the activities of each project to ensure that the Agency objectives are met.

Project types

Grants for exploratory ideas (GEI’s) are mini studies with a maximum duration of 3 months; receiving a grant of up to £10k.

Our aim is to drive growth into the UK economy by supporting the development of space technology and skills.

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MICROLAUNCH RECTENNA

A potentially game-changing concept for the launch of small satellites into low Earth orbit.

MicroLaunch is Thales Alenia Space in the UK’s (TASitUK) potentially game-changing concept for the launch of small satellites (<100kg) into low Earth orbit. The aim is to make cost and turnaround improvements over ten times better than other future small satellite dedicated launchers.

The concept represents novel developments in the field of microwave beamed launchers; a type of orbital launch system which generates thrust from wireless energy transmitted to it from a specialised ground station. By removing the need to store energy in the propellant, inert fuels and a thruster fuel efficiency many times greater than conventional chemical rockets can be achieved. This greatly reduces the mass and complexity of the launcher. Higher fuel efficiency also removes the need for multiple stages on a launcher; significantly reducing the cost of developing and operating a fully reusable system. An envisioned fleet of MicroLaunch vehicles operating from a single UK Spaceport could launch over 1,000 small satellites per year by 2030 at a potential cost of <£5,000/kg.

This study, funded by the UK Space Agency’s National Space Technology Programme, was carried out between September 2016 and March 2017. It investigated the key microwave rectenna technology required to enable this concept.

TASitUK was joined by its partners the University of Warwick, experts in Silicon Carbide diode design, and Thales Research and Technology, experts in microwave engineering, to determine the feasibility of the concept and advance the design. The project successfully completed its objectives while finding no technical show stoppers with the proposed concept or updated baseline vehicle design. Plans for a follow-on phase of experimental proof-of-concept have been defined.

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AN OPTICAL FIBRE SENSOR TO MEASURE NANOMETRE CHANGES IN POSITION

The wavelength of laser light can be very small – a millionth of a metre.

Sometimes we need to measure things moving to a very high accuracy. The LISA Pathfinder mission had to measure the motion of two cubes of gold-platinum alloy with nanometre precision – a length equivalent to a 100,000th of a human hair. Further, these measurements had to be made at low frequency – over thousands of seconds. Making measurements this precisely is particularly difficult on these timescales as everything has a tendency to ‘breath’, and slowly drift.

At the University of Glasgow we have successfully designed, built and demonstrated a sensor that uses a an optical fibre to make these kinds of measurements – in fact it is capable of making measurements a hundred times more precisely at higher frequencies.

The sensor uses laser light reflected from the end of the fibre combined with light reflected from the surface being monitored. Laser light can be used as a very fine ruler as it has a very consistent wavelength – the oscillations it makes as it propagates. By, effectively, counting as additional wavelengths of the light reflected from the surface pass by the stationary light reflected from the fibre end, we can monitor the motion of the surface.

The wavelength of laser light can be very small – a millionth of a metre – and we can count small fractions of a wavelength, enabling us to make very fine measurements with this fibre sensor.

The sensor that we have developed has other advantages, too. The sensor head is very small, around a centimetre by a millimetre, and doesn’t have any active parts. This means it can be easily retrofitted to systems and doesn’t disturb the system it is trying to measure by heating it up. The sensor has performed excellently in tests and we are now looking for new ways to implement it.

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GNC ARCHITECTURE FOR LOW COST RENDEZVOUS AND DOCKING MISSIONSProximity flight systems for rendezvous-and-docking (RDV&D), have traditionally been the domain of large, costly institutional missions which require extremely robust and expensive Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) solutions.

However, we are now entering into a new and exciting era of space exploitation, with a significant number of new mission applications on the horizon which will require close proximity RDV&D, and/or formation flying, to enable the creation of new space services, and the generation of new commercial and institutional markets on-orbit. These missions will in turn require lower cost GNC and sensor approaches in order to be commercially competitive whilst still being safety compliant.

In order to prepare for these future commercial mission demands, SSTL and Surrey Space Centre (SSC) have recently collaborated on a UK National Space Technology Programme (NSTP-2) study to develop low-cost GNC and sensor architectures for future RDV&D missions.

The baseline mission concept, used as a focus for the study, was a “co-operative” (i.e. both spacecraft work together) RDV&D mission demonstrator composed of two microsatellites, a “Chaser” spacecraft and a “Target” spacecraft. The Chaser is the master spacecraft, and is responsible for carrying the main sensors and performing the rendezvous manoeuvres including any potential collision avoidance manoeuvres. The Target spacecraft just maintains a stable attitude for the observations (from the Chaser spacecraft) and the docking phase. The baseline RDV sensor complement on the Chaser spacecraft is comprised of Relative GPS, a small camera and a “Commercial-Off-the-Shelf” LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) payload. The Target spacecraft also contributes its GPS measurements and provides visual identifiers for the camera on the Chaser spacecraft.

All the key tasks and goals of the study have been met and, as a result, the following conclusions can be made:

• The mission analysis has investigated a range of RDV scenarios and has shown that the trajectory of the Chaser spacecraft approach to the target spacecraft can be achieved with a very low change in velocity (ΔV).

• The GNC simulator developed in the study shows excellent positional control and low ΔV use. It is also flexible for use with other types of RDV missions and other sensors/actuators.

• The sensor combination can be used in all lighting conditions (including eclipse).

• The GNC architecture is low-cost but also safety compliant/robust.

• The system design is feasible using microsatellites.

• A Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of ≥4 has been achieved for both the sensors and the GNC architecture.

• This study has substantially developed SSTL and SSC’s general capability in RDV&D and has provided both parties with the core GNC/sensor capability to be actively involved in future missions in this area, such as demonstration missions in the shorter term and modular telescopes in the longer term.

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NREP ASTROTUBE™ MAX BOOM INDUSTRIAL RESEARCHOxford Space Systems (OSS) is a venture capital backed early-stage technology business that’s developing a new generation of deployable spacecraft structures for the global space industry. The diverse and experienced OSS team is rapidly establishing itself as an innovative and agile supplier to the global space sector.

The project led by Oxford Space Systems, in collaboration with NanoRacks (USA), explored significant and innovative improvements to the existing OSS AstroTube™ Max (A-Max) boom system, such that a proven, commercially focused technology from NanoRacks, the NREP, can be further enhanced.

The NREP (NanoRacks External Platform) allows customers to undertake various experiments from the International Space Station (ISS), and is currently externally attached in a fixed and static location to the space station. NanoRacks believe the attractiveness of their offering will be greatly enhanced if the NREP’s payloads could be deployed and retracted from the ISS by up to 10 metres. It is proposed variant of the A-Max boom be utilized to provide this capability. With this enhanced market offering, NanoRacks estimates a 25% increase in NREP’s utilization.

NanoRacks has provided OSS with a unique commercial opportunity: the company has the contractual ability to provide up to ten external platforms to the ISS, thus the commercial opportunity to OSS, as an early stage entrant to the global space market, is highly attractive. The life of a NREP is around 5 years, with a programme of continued replacement.

The NSTP3 Pathfinder grant has enabled OSS and Nanoracks to undertake this essential feasibility study, which otherwise

would not have been possible. This project has concluded that the proposed NREP Boom design is technically feasible and well aligned with the needs of prospective NREP customers. The study has also helped identify areas of further collaborative development for this technology.

OSS and NanoRacks have established and excellent working relationship, with this project serving as a foundation for further collaborative development of A-Max for NREP.

Beyond engagement with NanoRacks, OSS is currently in discussion with other potential US customers for variants of its boom technology. Being able to state that OSS has successfully collaborated with NanoRacks, a ‘star’ of the US New Space industry, has added credibility to OSS as it seeks to establish its reputation and credentials in the highly competitive US market.

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MEGA-CONSTELLATION SATELLITE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMWith significant growth in bandwidth demands driven by global internet connectivity and the ‘Internet of Things’, a number of NGSO satellite constellations have been proposed by both existing satellite operators and investor-funded start-up companies.

Trends in the development of these constellations were identified that showed that the requirements for satellite resource management (SRM) for NGSO constellations will be different to GSO satellites and their conventional payloads.

This study analysed and defined requirements for an effective SRM system for such constellations. In turn this presented an opportunity for e2E to build upon our heritage in developing link analysis software and satellite resource planning tools for geostationary satellite operators and to develop requirements for NGSO systems.

The role of an SRM for NGSO constellations is to generate the planning of the satellites’ resources in mega-constellations and by managing the flexibility and constraints (geostationary and other non-geostationary satellites, consideration of terrestrial systems such as 5G, priority access to spectrum over the equator) in the allocation of resources (beams, frequency plans, connectivity as required). WThe system aims to optimise resource utilisation, maximising revenue for the operators from their investment. Efficiency in handling interference issues and improvement in quality of service were also identified as key factors. Finally, in a dynamic operating environment some automation of payload configuration is likely to be required: an effective SRM system will assist in developing and implementing automation algorithms that will reduce the number of skilled operational staff required.

The study involved developing a prototype SRM system application which in turn involved evaluating a range of the latest software technologies and libraries. A web-based front-end library was selected that provides many of the visualisations necessary for

the satellite constellations with the back-end software design focusing upon an operations perspective: visualisations of example mega-constellation and their associated frequency plans proved useful both for demonstrating the vision for an SRM system application and for identifying challenges with the proposed software (such as constraints related to how a large constellation can be visualised).

The final software design will largely depend upon whether the radio resource is fully planned or whether resources are allocated on a more dynamic basis: feedback from key industry leaders has suggested a conservative planning approach may be favoured however this may not be feasible for large numbers of satellites or beams.

The study has been exciting and valuable not just to the industry but also to a core stream of e2E’s business activities: the project has enabled e2E to reengage with existing NGSO constellation operators and to open dialog with new ones, allowing us to gain valuable and improved insights into priorities from the perspective of satellite operators. Obtaining feedback from industry (including technical experts from engineering, management and procurement) was instrumental in terms of validating the assumptions made and providing direction for future development.

The software evaluation process enabled e2E’s software engineering team a significant period of development activities. This knowledge, directly acquired through this project, will be beneficial across many of e2E’s projects in this area.

The study has resulted in a formal set of reviewed requirements being established: feedback received indicated that the requirements were well in line with industry expectation. A roadmap has been developed that describes how the SRM system can be translated to a commercially viable product in time to meet the operational needs of major proposed and existing satellite constellations which will form the basis of future development work on this project with the objective of positioning e2E as a leading provider of resource management software to the satellite industry.

Documents

National Space Technology Programme · Space Technology Programme (NSTP-2) study to develop low-cost GNC and sensor architectures for future RDV&D missions. The baseline mission concept,