UNIT - II

Spacecraft Subsystem and Reliability

Consideration
 Contents
• Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS)
• Telemetry, Tracking, Command and Monitoring (TTC&M)
• Power System
• Communications Subsystems
• Satellite Antennas
• Equipment Reliability
Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS)
• The AOCS of a satellite is to fix the orientation of satellite’s
Antennas to point towards the earth and vice versa.
• Affecting parameters (Solar Pressure and Eddy current) –
0.86° per year.
• Wobble or nutation
• Station keeping maneuvers using gas jets or thrusters via TTC
& M system.
 Rocket Motors

• Types of Thrusters available:

– Liquid Fuel thrusters: Hydrazine or Bipropellant type
– Resistojet
– Arcjet
– Ion thrusters
– Hall Thruster
– Electrospray/Field Emission Electric Propulsion Thruster
– Pulsed Plasma Thruster
 Attitude Control System
• These are of: Spinner and Three-axis Stabilized Satellite

• Spinner: (30 to 100 rpm)

– It has a cylindrical drum surrounded by solar cells for
power systems and rocket motors.
– Antennas are placed at the top and are rotated in the
direction opposite to that of the rotation of the satellite
body and is called despun. (TTC&M pointing towards the
earth)

• Three axis Stabilization:

– Pitch, roll and yaw (separate inertial wheel)
Forces on Synchronous Satellite
…..
 Three-axis stabilization
• The reference Cartesian axes (XR, YR, ZR) with the satellite at the
origin.
• ZR is directed toward the center of the earth and is in the plane of the
satellite orbit.
• XR is tangent to the orbital plane and lies in the orbital plane.
• YR is perpendicular to the orbital plane, with XR and YR at the east
and south.
• Roll about the XR axis, Pitch about the YR axis and Yaw about the ZR
axes.
Axes of a Satellite
Principle of NS Control
Onboard Control System of Spinner Satellite
• A model control system for the spinning type is given below:
 Orbit Control System
• A geostationary satellite is subjected to several for as said
earlier.
• NS maneuver and ES maneuver are used
…..
 TTC&M
• Telemetry Tracking Command and Monitoring which involves
the link between the earth station and satellite for management
task of the later.
• It involves:
– Controlling the orbit and attitude of the satellite
– Sensor and Subsystem Status Monitoring
– On and Off of communication system
• The earth station may be handled by a third party owner on
contract or by the satellite owner itself.
 Telemetry and Monitoring System
• Different Sensors are monitored and the data are collected
from it.
• Telemetry data collected are usually digitized and transmitted
as PSK with low data rate using TDM.
• Alarms are also fitted to represent a worst case scenario.
 Tracking System
• Triangulation method
• Ranging tones (Tellurometer)
 Command System
• Control the AKM during launch and spin up a spinner or
extend the solar sails of Three-axis stabilized satellite.
• Control code is provided for security and takes a overall of 5
to 10s for execution.
• Operating frequency is of 6 and 4 GHz band for command and
will not overlap with the communication system frequency
band.
• The main TTC is inoperable during launch phase and a backup
system is used at this time.
• In adverse condition, the S-band or UHF is allowed with
sufficient marginal level to be used at the satellite receiver.
Example: SPROUT
 Power Systems
• Solar cell and the insolation is of 1.39 kW/m2
• 15% extra solar cell are provided to overcome aging
• Arrangement of solar cell is of Solar Sail for Three-axis
Stabilization and Cylindrical orientation in a spinner.
• Temperature variation
• Eclipses occur for 70 min around the equinoxes and instead of
batteries (Nickel- Hydrogen), the satellite is shut down within the
period of eclipse.
• It occurs after 1 AM of the local time and is of 20° W longitude of
the service area.
• Sensors for monitoring the battery and power parameters are sent to
both the onboard processing system as well as the controlling earth
station.
• 20 to 50 V with 20 to 100 ampere-hours capacity.
 Communication System
• The main component of Satellite communication, which involved
various tedious research and investment to meet the requirement of
long distance wireless communication.
• Even with Large aperture earth station antenna, a power that rarely
exceed 10-10 W could be received.
• A 5 to 25 dB of SNR should be achieved for efficient performance.
• Bandwidth constraints and power limitation (latest transponders
with bandwidth of 500 MHz or 1000 MHz or 2 GHz with power up
to 200 W.
• Frequency reuse concept with Spatial and orthogonal polarizations
were applied to improve channel capacity.
• Frequency fixed by FCC as 6/4 GHz, 14/11 GHz and 30/20 GHz
bands.
• Spacing between satellites on GEO is ranging from 2° from that of
priorly used 3° providing more extra slots for new satellites.
 Transponders

• It can be of Zone beam or Spot beam

• Redundancy condition is given to avoid loss of information
because of failure of one component in the link.
• 500 MHz bandwidth is divided into 36 MHz wide channels for
each of the transponder.
• A satellite can have upto 44 transponders (12 to 44) each with 36
54, or 72 MHz bandwidth.
• Intermodulation is reduced by employing narrow band
transponders.
• Also, Multiple Access technique with MF-TDMA are used to
improve the characteristics compared to the FDMA which has
output backoff (2 to 7 dB).
…..
…..
…..
 Single Conversion for 6/4 GHz
• Travelling wave tube amplifier (TWTA) (high power output
(>50 W)) and Solid State Power Amplifier (SSPA).
• Redundancy is provided with 16 for 10 or even 14 for 10.
 Double Conversion for 14/11 GHz
• Filter followed by an equalizer is usually used to equalize the
amplitude and phase variations (leads to group delay
distortion) in the pass band.
 Onboard Processing Transponder
• Switched beam Technology with narrow bandwidth provides
both high gain and EIRP
• 16-QAM can be used with four bits per symbol
• By this, two small earth stations may access each other
directly through satellite.
QUESTIONS