For the next mission, Orbit will be involved from the very beginning of mission concept design. At a high level, the above tasks still apply, but in detail, expect to do the following tasks for the new mission:

  1. In the mission concept selection stage of design, running trade studies to determine a set of feasible orbits based on performance in early simulations, and available orbits from launch providers.Keywords: Low Earth Orbit, Sun Synchronous Orbit, Orbital Decay, Target Revisit Time
  2. After locking in the concept, running simulations with whatever mission requirements are available and whatever launch provider information is available to select an optimal orbit for the mission’s requirements.Keywords: Orbit propagator, trajectory analysis, J2 perturbation
  3. In high level design, designing and running low-to-moderate fidelity simulations to estimate performance metrics, environmental conditions, and other trajectory-dependent factors for use by other systems in their own high level designs.Keywords: Radiation exposure, thermal environment, solar panel performance, e.g. imaging system performance, image distortion, spacecraft pointing budget, agility requirements
  4. At the same time in high level design, having regular sync-ups with other systems to make sure that everyone is on the same page about trajectory parameters, and details of the orbit.
  5. In detailed design, updating mission simulations to have higher fidelity, incorporating other systems’ work into developing simulations that do more than just predict the trajectory of the spacecraft.Keywords: Thermal nodal model, solar occultation model, ADCS dynamics integration, creation of mission operations schedule

Past this stage in design, Orbit was no longer required for the FINCH mission. However, there may be particular requirements of the new mission that would merit from having an Orbit team around for longer. For example, having the Orbit team around to perform re-analysis of contact times with the spacecraft when setting up a new network of ground stations to talk to the spacecraft.