Constellation of Aircraft Monitoring Systems
Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois Capstone Project
CAMS represents a solution to the capstone project requirement of generating a satellite constellation that monitors aircraft health and status data while providing 95% global coverage. The team consisted of 8 members of which I was the Payload subsystems Lead, the ADCS subsystem sublead and the Lead Systems Engineer for the group.
Mother of All Graphics Design
Based on the requirements defined in the Request for Proposal provided by the LASSI Lab, I was able to design a Mother of All Graphics in collaboration with my teammates. The Concept of operations summarized a basic plan for how the constellation would fulfill the requirements of the Lab. The Management approach defined a timeline of operations and breakup of responsibilities. The Technical approach described how the different subsystems would interact and broke the work into multiple tiers. The cost approach compared the cost tradeoffs.
Payload Subsystem Design
The payload system design was the starting point for the mission. After much research, I chose an ADS-B receiver that would receive health and status updates from aircrafts all over the world. While determining the altitude of operation and frequency of the receiver, I had to coordinate with members on the Orbits subsystem and the C&DH subsystem to determine the orbit, the number of satellites and the amount of storage. Designing a communications payload for this project taught me a lot about transmitters, receivers and generating a link budget for the data.
Other Subsystem Design
Once I was done with the payloads subsystem, I assisted with the comparing different sensors and actuators for the Attitude Determination and Controls Subsystems which gave me an insight into different CubeSat control methods. I also assisted with performing thermal analysis on Siemens NX10 on the Cubesat structure through an entire orbit cycle. I also assisted with comparing power systems option and calculating the number of solar cells required.