Home / Mission engineering
Space mission engineering from objectives to a costed design
Microcosm turns broad objectives and hard limits into an affordable space system. The work starts with your mission, not with a spacecraft.
What the work covers
- Constellation and orbit design
- Spacecraft bus and ground system concepts
- Launch vehicle selection and integration
- Concept of operations
- Cost modeling
- Cost and risk reduction studies
Missions we have analyzed
Military: persistent surveillance, space situational awareness, missile and aircraft tracking, GPS augmentation, communications, weapons of mass destruction detection, weather monitoring and technology demonstrations.
Civil and commercial: GPS augmentation, communications, weather and iceberg tracking, search and rescue, agricultural and oil field monitoring, interplanetary missions and technology demonstrations.
Sensors we have evaluated: electro-optical, infrared, multispectral, hyperspectral, Fabry-Perot interferometer, synthetic aperture radar and LIDAR.
Orbits and coverage
A sun-synchronous orbit revisits an area every 2 to 3 days. A spacecraft in an orbit inclined slightly above the latitude of interest passes over that area 5 to 6 times a day.
Three spacecraft in three planes, 120 degrees apart, cover the area around the clock. A pass comes about every 90 minutes.
Microcosm has also proposed orbits that address orbital debris. Microcosm Press published Mission Geometry: Orbit and Constellation Design and Management (2001), a 934-page text.
Low altitude changes the payload
A passive payload scales one to one with altitude. One-meter optics at 800 km become 0.25 m at 200 km.
An active payload that needs 2,560 W at 800 km needs 40 W or 10 W at 200 km, depending on the scaling law.
This is why NanoEye flies low. See the NanoEye specifications.
GPS architecture work
Microcosm received a Phase I SBIR contract from the U.S. Air Force for a flexible, expandable architecture for next-generation GPS. The architecture aims to cut sustainment cost. It also aims to improve signal security, time to first fix, accuracy and jamming resistance.
Earlier, Microcosm completed a utility analysis for the GPS program office at Los Angeles Air Force Base. It found that GPS must deliver the required navigation signal at the lowest possible cost.
Independent simulations
Government-funded, independent simulations modeled constellations of NanoEye buses with electro-optical, electro-optical and infrared, and radar payloads. They showed large benefits from low-cost constellations.
Results are available on request to people with the right security access.
Ask about a mission study
Send your objectives, limits and schedule.
Or write to microcosm@smad.com or call (310) 539-2306.