Expertise

Astris Aerospace’s expertise encompasses the complete design and development of satellite Attitude Determination and Control Systems (ADCS). We possess both in-depth knowledge and over 12 years of first-hand experience developing spacecraft Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) algorithms, simulators and real-time satellite flight code. The technologies we deliver are proven for operation in space. To date, the GNC designs our engineers have previously helped develop have flown on over 40 satellites which have been launched and successfully operated in orbit. Our solutions span acros all phases of the spacecraft development cycle: from conceptual mission architecting and preliminary design, to selecting hardware and delivering flighty worthy code.

Conceptual and Detailed Design Phase

Astris Aerospace provides space mission design and analysis for both single satellite and constellation programs in the conceptual design phase. This may include deliverables in the form of mission architecting, feasibility studies, requirements definition and pointing budgets. By leveraging our extensive expertise, we are able to deliver analyses for a variety of preliminary design investigations:

• Pointing and system budgets
• Constellation coverage
• Satellite revisit times
• Sensor and actuator cost/benefit analyses
• Mission simulation and operational performance
• High precision orbit propagation

We also support detailed design by leveraging our in-house built high-fidelity GNC simulation framework, STELAR, which accurately models the space environment, hardware (sensor/actuator) behaviour and satellite motion. Finalizing hardware selection, high-fidelity analyses, architecting of operational procedures and development of pointing and tracking performance are all verified on this framework before flight code delivery.

GNC Development for Flight

Engineering real-time, flight-worthy software designed for space is at the core of our expertise. This includes the development of the estimators and filters to determine spacecraft attitude, the onboard trajectories to track targets and the controllers to achieve accurate pointing. We complement our software by also facilitating hardware placement, sensor calibration and flight readiness tests and simulations. Mature satellite programs are able to benefit from our experience in validating GNC simulators, debugging on-orbit ADCS performance and implementing on-orbit upgrades to extend mission lifetimes.

Technical design layouts can be seen for both our Software and Simulators. For a detailed list of all our GNC technologies see our Services and Solutions.

GNC Outreach

Astris Aerospace is routinely involved in outreach events throughout Canada. To aid in the education of GNC design, all of our low-precision tools are made availble to the general public through the ACS Toolbox on Github. We regularly provide training on GNC algorithms and satellite ADCS design for academia and companies who are looking to gain entry into the space market and require on-orbit experience.

We are also deeply integrated in the GNC community, contributing to technical conferences across North America and Europe. We regularly present our GNC developments and releases for the open-source community. Visit us at the following conferences this year.