PROPULSIVE SMALL EXPENDABLE DEPLOYER SYSTEM (PROSEDS) MISSION AND TELEMETRY SYSTEM OVERVIEW

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama will launch the Propulsive Small Expendable Deployer System (ProSEDS) space experiment in late 2000. ProSEDS will demonstrate the use of an electrodynamic tether propulsion system and will utilize a conducting wire tether to generate limited spacecraft power. This paper will provide an overview of the ProSEDS mission and will discuss the design, and test of the spacecraft telemetry system. The ProSEDS telemetry subsystem employs a combination of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and launch vehicle telemetry system components to minimize costs as well as power consumption. Several measures were used to aid the conservation of spacecraft power resources. First, the transmitter was modified to limit input power consumption to less that 20 watts while providing approximately two watts Radio Frequency (RF) output power. Secondly, the ProSEDS on board Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver is being used to control input power to the transmitter in order to limit the telemetry operations to occasions when the spacecraft is in proximity to preprogrammed ground station locations.