The course will give an overview on space mission design devoted to Earth Observation (with a special focus on gravity missions), from scientific observables to Attitude and Orbital Control Systems (AOCS) design, technology design and qualification aspects, till mission architecture and implementation.

Guest Lecture: Luca Massotti graduated in Aerospace Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino (IT), and in 2004 received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Aeronautical and Space Department of the Politecnico di Torino. He was visiting researcher at West Virginia University (WVU, US) to study aircraft modelling and Neural Network controllers. He joined Thales Alenia Space in Turin (IT) as an engineering consultant for metrology and AOCS. From 2005 to 2007 he was a Post Doctoral Researcher at the Earth Observation Programmes Department of ESA at ESTEC facility (NL) and he is currently a consultant at the Future Missions & Instruments division, with Rhea System BV, since 2007. He has been working on European projects of Earth Explorers satellites (in particular on Biomass, EE7, and FLEX, EE8), GEO High Resolution and GOCE follow-on missions. He is actively involved in the ESA Technology Research Programme in the domain of micro-propulsion, laser metrology and AOCS. In 2020 he has been appointed as system engineer of the MAGIC/NGGM mission, and coordinator of several Inter-Agency working groups between ESA and NASA on gravity topics. Dr. Massotti is adjunct professor at Politecnico di Torino, Member of the AIAA GNC Technical Committee, AIAA Associate Fellow, and lecturer at several universities and research centers (e.g. Giessen University, FOTEC, SYSU and HUST University (China)). He is author and co-author of more than 100 publications. Overview of ESA missions, with links to similar non-EU missions (3 hrs) - Sensors for Attitude and Orbital Control Systems (AOCS) (3 hrs) - Propulsion technologies (2 hrs) - Actuators for AOCS (3 hrs) - Gravity Missions: GOCE and MAGIC/NGGM (4 hrs) -AOCS design of Earth Explorer LEO satellites (2 hrs) -Geostationary satellites with very high stability requirements (2 hrs) -Exercises and hands on specific space design problems (3 hrs) - Synergies in technology: commonalities between LISA and NGGM (2 hrs)

In presenza

Presentazione report scritto - Sviluppo di project work in team

P.D.1-1 - Gennaio