If Orbit were to start all over again, there are several things that we would have done differently. This page documents some of the major changes we discussed.

High level strategic roadmap

A high level strategic roadmap should be the first thing that you create for Orbit. Even if you have incomplete information, it is integral to make one with sufficient detail to turn into individual projects for members to do. Without a high level strategic roadmap.

• Develop proper requirements & scope for orbit
  • We did NOT do this well at all in 2020
  • Try to lock in as much as you can, it SHOULD come from the mission concept first and foremost
  • Scientific mission > Orbit > High level functional req > Systems
• Once you have those goals
  • Zeroth: Literature review (lightweight)
  • First: STK
    • Develop metrics to assess the goodness of a given orbit
    • Run all of these orbits in a mission simulation
  • For us, we couldn’t actually calculate these metrics, so we made a decision with incomplete information, and decided to do it later

Project Division

• A backup approach if you run into obstacles like this:
  • Adopt an iterative approach
  • i.e. every 3 months, you have a new “Best Guess” of what you want for the target orbit, and you REPEAT this 2 to 3 times with better tools at each step
• Timeline
  • 1st month: figure out how you want to run your iterative development
  • Month 2 to 4: 1st cycle
  • Month 5 to 7: 2nd cycle
• Incorporate reflection into design process
• Month 1: Learning; Month 2: Architecting, Month 3: Implementation, then review