Development of Software Toolsuite for Rapid Generation of Spacecraft Requirements from Mission Constraints for Spacecraft Proposal Development

Abstract

The development, testing, and results of a software suite for automated development of spacecraft requirements is discussed. This software suite will enable mission scientists and engineers to rapidly develop spacecraft requirements from a previously-developed set of mission requirements. The software, written in MATLAB, is controlled by a Master Controller script, whose purpose is to accept inputs from the user and call subfunctions responsible for designing the various spacecraft subsystem requirements. The software was tested through the use of a series of arbitrarily-generated mission requirements, with the test results being examined for potential feasibility and reasonableness. Case studies are examined which show the efficacy of the software suite to accurately generate spacecraft requirements. The first case study examines a set of software-developed spacecraft requirements intended to meet the mission requirements of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The second case study examines a set of infeasible mission requirements to the planet Uranus, in an effort to demonstrate that the software will generate realistic, but infeasible, spacecraft requirements when the mission requirements are themselves infeasible. Both case studies generate reasonable spacecraft requirements as expected, with the direct comparison between the Mars spacecraft resulting in very similar preliminary spacecraft designs. This software suite will enable spacecraft scientists and engineers to quickly assess the feasibility of mission concepts and proposal designs through rapid development of spacecraft requirements.