In recent years the small satellites’ market has undergone an exponential growth. This trend has seen many companies and countries developing a much higher number of small satellites than in the past, but launch providers found themselves unable to provide launch services at a cost that could be affordable for these new spacecraft manufacturers that had to rely on being considered secondary payloads on missions dedicated to bigger satellites. In this framework, launch providers started to focus on the development of new systems in order to respond to market demands, paving the way to the concept of “dedicated rideshare missions”, that are missions specifically designed to be shared by a multitude of small satellites. Avio in Europe (along with other companies) developed its own system, called SSMS (“Small Spacecraft Mission Service”) and proved it with its VV16 flight on September 2, 2020 aboard a VEGA launcher to provide a dedicated rideshare service to small payloads to reduce launch cost and provide access to space to small companies and countries that are not able to afford a dedicated launch by themselves. As an evolution to the VEGA launcher, the new ESA launcher VEGA C is one of the most flexible launch systems developed to date. With the SSMS dispenser, it can release multiple aggregates of small satellites in different orbits in a single mission. This paper presents the design of a SSMS mission to present and demonstrate the performances of this system and more in detail its flexibility. Mission design consists in the selection and optimization of the mission data within the on-board software in order to maximize performances and comply with both technical and mission requirements. An optimized 3 DoF trajectory is used as starting point for the selection of the mission data, such as the pitch and yaw profiles followed by the launcher during the atmospheric phase of the flight. The standard mission design procedure, for VEGA and VEGA C flights, involves the use of a 6 DoF simulator to assess system performances during all mission phases, including the most critical ones such as collision and contamination avoidance manoeuvres (CCAM) which are especially critical in a multipayload and multiorbit mission such as the one presented in this article. Mission feasibility in a wide range of operating conditions is then demonstrated through Monte Carlo analysis as done in every VEGA and VEGA-C mission definition analysis.
VEGA-C guidance and 6 DOF mission design definition for small spacecraft rideshare mission
Small Satellites Systems and Services Symposium (4S 2024) ; 2024 ; Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Proc. SPIE ; 13546
20.03.2025
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
SPIE | 2025
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