Mission Design Lab
Create a mission design with its orbit and payload, run the orbit analysis and read the mass, power and link budgets.
Open the Mission Design Lab
The lab lists your mission designs with their status (Draft and so on), the number of orbits defined and payloads set. A new account sees an empty list with a button to create the first design.
This page needs a free account.
Create a new mission
Press New Mission. Give it a name, which is required, and a short description of the mission overview, then save. The design opens on its own page.
Define the orbit
Enter the altitude in km, the inclination, the eccentricity and the RAAN. Press Run orbit analysis. The platform computes the period, the RAAN drift and whether the inclination is sun synchronous (SSO). Computed values are labelled Auto-computed.
Add your payload
Under Payload (Quick Entry) enter the payload name, choose its type (for example Optical imager, Synthetic Aperture Radar, AIS receiver, ADS-B receiver, GNSS reflectometry or Technology demo), then the resolution or sensitivity, the mass, the power and the data rate.
Read the budgets
The Mass Budget and Power Budget show the total and the margin. The Link and Data section shows the data rate, the data volume per day and the link margin in dB. A link margin of at least 3 dB is recommended.
Go deeper with a concurrent design session
Under Concurrent Design Sessions press New Session. This opens the full subsystem worksheets with automatic budget roll up. See the guide called Concurrent design sessions.
Design the operations
Open Operations scenarios to define how the satellite points in each situation. Save the mission design first, then come back to it.
- If a message says the design engine is not reachable, wait a minute and press the button again.
- Delete removes a design for good. The page asks you to confirm first.