A Systematic Review of Product Design for Space Instrument Innovation, Reliability, and Manufacturing

The design and development of space instruments are considered to be distinct from that of other products. It is because the key considerations are vastly different from those that govern the use of products on planet earth. The service life of a space instrument, its use in extreme space environments, size, weight, cost, and the complexity of maintenance must all be considered. As a result, more innovative ideas and resource support are required to assist mankind in space exploration. This article reviews the impact of product design and innovation on the development of space instruments. Using a systematic literature search review and classification, we have identified over 129 papers and finally selected 48 major articles dealing with space instrument product innovation design. According to the studies, it is revealed that product design and functional performance is the main research focuses on the studied articles. The studies also highlighted various factors that affect space instrument manufacturing or fabrication, and that innovativeness is also the key in the design of space instruments. Lastly, the product design is important to affect the reliability of the space instrument. This review study provides important information and key considerations for the development of smart manufacturing technologies for space instruments in the future.

ExoClock project: an open platform for monitoring the ephemerides of Ariel targets with contributions from the public

The Ariel mission will observe spectroscopically around 1000 exoplanets to further characterise their atmospheres. For the mission to be as efficient as possible, a good knowledge of the planets’ ephemerides is needed before its launch in 2028. While ephemerides for some planets are being refined on a per-case basis, an organised effort to collectively verify or update them when necessary does not exist. In this study, we introduce the ExoClock project, an open, integrated and interactive platform with the purpose of producing a confirmed list of ephemerides for the planets that will be observed by Ariel. The project has been developed in a manner to make the best use of all available resources: observations reported in the literature, observations from space instruments and, mainly, observations from ground-based telescopes, including both professional and amateur observatories. To facilitate inexperienced observers and at the same time achieve homogeneity in the results, we created data collection and validation protocols, educational material and easy to use interfaces, open to everyone. ExoClock was launched in September 2019 and now counts over 140 participants from more than 15 countries around the world. In this release, we report the results of observations obtained until the 15h of April 2020 for 120 Ariel candidate targets. In total, 632 observations were used to either verify or update the ephemerides of 84 planets. Additionally, we developed the Exoplanet Characterisation Catalogue (ECC), a catalogue built in a consistent way to assist the ephemeris refinement process. So far, the collaborative open framework of the ExoClock project has proven to be highly efficient in coordinating scientific efforts involving diverse audiences. Therefore, we believe that it is a paradigm that can be applied in the future for other research purposes, too.

Definition and use of functional analogues in planetary exploration

<p>The practical limitations inherent to human and robotic planetary exploration necessitate the development of specific protocols, instrumentations and methods. This non-standard approach implies testing and validation phases in order to optimize the setups and to improve the scientific interpretations prior to, during, and after a mission. These tests are made either using space instruments or representative systems and are carried out on ‘analogue samples’ and/or in ‘analogue sites’. Analogues can be globally defined as objects or sites having compositions and/or physical properties similar to specific extraterrestrial objects.</p> <p>Nevertheless, due to the variability in composition and properties of natural materials, there are always – inevitably – some differences between the analogue and the object(s) to which it refers. In studies using analogues, it is thus important to focus on the specific properties that need to be imitated and to consider analogue properties rather than analogue sites or samples alone.</p> <p>Thus, we recently introduced the concept of “functional analogues” (Foucher <em>et al.</em>, 2021).  Functional analogues are defined as terrestrial sites, materials or objects exhibiting general properties more or less similar to those anticipated on the targeted extraterrestrial body, but having specific analogue properties that are highly or perfectly relevant for a given use.</p> <p>Based on this definition, we sorted functional analogues according to their utility for different domains, from engineering to astrobiology, throughout the timeline of space missions. We also proposed logical pathways to facilitate the selection of the best-suited functional analogue(s) according to their intended use.</p> <p><em>Reference: Foucher, F., Hickman-Lewis, K., Hutzler, A., Joy, K.H., Folco, L., Bridges, J.C., Wozniakiewicz, P., Martínez-Frías, J., Debaille, V., Zolensky, M., Yano, H., Bost, N., Ferrière, L., Lee, M., Michalski, J., Schroeven-Deceuninck, H., Kminek, G., Viso, M., Russell, S., Smith, C., Zipfel, J., Westall, F., 2021. Definition and use of functional analogues in planetary exploration. Planetary and Space Science 197, 105162.</em></p>

Performance simulations tools for Space Telescopes applied to Ariel space mission.

<p>Since the very early phases of designing and developing space instruments, we need fast and reliable tools to validate and optimise the projects. In the framework of the Ariel Space Mission, we developed novel, versatile tools to estimate space instruments performance. </p> <p>ExoSim, a transiting exoplanet observation simulator, is a time domain simulator for space telescopes, that has been developed inside the Ariel framework, but already adapted to both HST and JWST, proving its versatility and its capability to accurately predict science products. It can be used to develop the data reduction pipeline, and to optimise systematics removal techniques.</p> <p>ArielRad, the Ariel radiometric model, is a simulator able to accurately predict the telescope performance in observing a candidate target for all the mission photometric and spectroscopic channels. The software inputs are a target description and a parameterization of the payload, allowing the investigation of different design performance. The software is also able to simulate entire target lists, predicting the observing time and the resulting SNR vs wavelength. Analysing 1000 candidate targets in a 20 minutes time scale, it allows the validation of different observational strategies. The software architecture is based on ExoRad 2, that is publicly available and can be easily adapted to perform the same tasks for other future space missions.</p>

Improving Performance-Power-Programmability in Space Avionics with Edge Devices: VBN on Myriad2 SoC

The advent of powerful edge devices and AI algorithms has already revolutionized many terrestrial applications; however, for both technical and historical reasons, the space industry is still striving to adopt these key enabling technologies in new mission concepts. In this context, the current work evaluates an heterogeneous multi-core system-on-chip processor for use on-board future spacecraft to support novel, computationally demanding digital signal processors and AI functionalities. Given the importance of low power consumption in satellites, we consider the Intel Movidius Myriad2 system-on-chip and focus on SW development and performance aspects. We design a methodology and framework to accommodate efficient partitioning, mapping, parallelization, code optimization, and tuning of complex algorithms. Furthermore, we propose an avionics architecture combining this commercial off-the-shelf chip with a field programmable gate array device to facilitate, among others, interfacing with traditional space instruments via SpaceWire transcoding. We prototype our architecture in the lab targeting vision-based navigation tasks. We implement a representative computer vision pipeline to track the 6D pose of ENVISAT using megapixel images during hypothetical spacecraft proximity operations. Overall, we achieve 2.6 to 4.9 FPS with only 0.8 to 1.1 W on Myriad2 , i.e., 10-fold acceleration versus modern rad-hard processors. Based on the results, we assess various benefits of utilizing Myriad2 instead of conventional field programmable gate arrays and CPUs.

Inventory classification system in space mission component replenishment using multi-attribute fuzzy ABC classification

PurposeThis project attempts to present a space component inventory classification system for space inventory replenishment and management. The authors propose to adopt a classification system that can incorporate all the different variables in a multi-criteria configuration. Fuzzy logic is applied as an effective way for formulating classification problems in space inventory replenishment.Design/methodology/approachA fuzzy-based approach with ABC classification is proposed to incorporate all the different variables in a multi-criteria configuration. Fuzzy logic is applied as an effective way for formulating classification problems in space inventory replenishment of the soil preparation system (SOPSYS) which is used in grinding and sifting Phobos rocks to sub-millimeter size in the Phobos-Grunt space mission. An information system was developed using the existing platform and was used to support the key aspects in performing inventory classification and purchasing optimization.FindingsThe proposed classification system was found to be able to classify the inventory and optimize the purchasing decision efficiency. Based on the information provided from the system, implementation plans for the SOPSYS project and related space projects can be proposed.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper addresses one of the main difficulties in handling qualitative or quantitative classification criteria. The model can be implemented using mathematical calculation tools and integrated into the existing inventory management system. The proposed model has important implications in optimizing the purchasing decisions to shorten the research and development of other space instruments in space missions.Originality/valueInventory management in the manufacture of space instruments is one of the major problems due to the complexity of the manufacturing process and the large variety of items. The classification system can optimize purchasing decision-making in the inventory management process. It is also designed to be flexible and can be implemented for the manufacture of other space mission instruments.

Seasonal changes of Sahara desert dust transport over Balkans

This article presents an investigation of seasonal behavior of Sahara desert dust transport over the Balkans. The data used is satellite measurements of monthly averaged Absorption Aerosol Index (AAI) value. The researched period is from June 1995 till the end of 2019. The data used is from four different space instruments onboard five satellites. The area of interest is a rectangle with corners 23 E 43 N and 24 E 35 N. The data from different sources is compared and discussed.