The Space Industry

0:06: Hi and welcome to the Space Industry podcast by satsearch.
0:09: My name is Narayan, COO at satsearch, and I'll be your host as we journey through the space industry.
0:14: The space sector is going through some seismic changes, promising to generate significant impact for life on Earth and enable humans to sustain life elsewhere in the cosmos.
0:24: At satsearch, we work with buyers and suppliers across the global marketplace, helping to accelerate missions through our online platform.
0:32: Based on our day to day work supporting commercial activity.
0:36: My aim here during this podcast is to shed light on the boots on the ground developments across the globe that are helping foster and drive technical and commercial innovation.
0:46: So come join me as we delve into a fascinating, challenging, and ultimately inspiring sector.
0:53: Today we're going to be talking to Sergio Sanchez, who's a software engineer and the product owner of Flight Dynamic Systems at the Terma Group.
1:01: The Terma Group specializes in aerospace and defense-related products, and their space line is focused on essential electronics and software for space missions.
1:12: In today's episode, we'll be talking about flight dynamic systems, which are becoming increasingly important as constellations mature in the industry.
1:22: We're going to be talking about how flight dynamic systems streamline orbit determination and spacecraft management, automating operations to reduce workload and save costs for a variety of space mission profiles, including formation flying and mega constellations.
1:37: Sergio, thank you so much for taking the time to recording this podcast with us.
1:41: Welcome to the Space Industry podcast.
1:43: Thank you very much.
1:44: I'm very glad to be here.
1:46: Great.
1:46: So, we will kick off by learning from you, who's obviously an expert in flight dynamics.
1:52: What is flight dynamics and what that has to do with managing constellations.
1:57: Well, flight dynamics as a concept for constellations, especially for constellations on Earth, is the type from the part of the mission analysis in which we are designing a mission, for example, the air observation for telecommunications.
2:13: Each of these missions have different, site dynamics concepts, but at the end it is to.
2:20: Monitoring and controlling the orbits is when the satellites are placed.
2:25: Flight dynamics is a growing field because of the way the constellations are also growing.
2:30: What was constellations maybe 10 years ago is rapidly changed with the introductions of constellations like Starling, which has now thousands of satellites that are out there.
2:39: What are the choices involved in choosing a flight dynamic system?
2:43: What is really going on behind the scenes with system engineers, with founding teams that are out there?
2:49: Especially because obviously constellations grow in numbers depending on funding, depending on the type of.
2:54: Organization and so on.
2:55: So if you can debrief this in a simple way, that would be excellent to know how this works.
2:59: Yes, sir, as you said in the latest years, especially with this new space coming into the scene, choosing a good side dynamics could be key for your mission.
3:10: First of all, let me introduce what is a flight dynamic system.
3:13: Usually flight dynamic systems are on the ground, so they are on us with us.
3:19: There is a part of type dynamics that are on board, but it's still most of the services and functionalities that has to be done on edge.
3:28: Depending on your mission, your groundes must be well decided for these constellations forethos telecommunications, right now the challenge is this grow on the number of satellites.
3:42: So before you could have 2 operators, 3 operators.
3:46: For satellites right now it's impossible.
3:48: You will have more people operating satellites that doing the rest of the things on the company.
3:55: Also, the complexity of these constellations is also growing.
3:58: They have to be placed in the very specific orbits or lying in a formation to get the most of the satellites, and it's also affecting how cydynamics systems has to be designed and the services and features they have to provide.
4:15: The missions that we are talking about here has a lot of intricacies because there are probably companies starting with one satellite.
4:22: If that works, they raise more funding to maybe add 2 or 3 more, then they go from that saying that, OK, now we have a full-fledged concept here, and we want to do 30, 40, 50 of them.
4:33: How do these teams adopt such flight dynamic systems?
4:36: If I'm a satellite builder.
4:38: Build my satellite and plan for my ADCS system to work for that one satellite or a propulsion to keep that in a particular orbit in one.
4:45: Suddenly, I introduced another satellite and one more, and so on.
4:48: Is this something that people do typically in-house or use an external vendor?
4:54: For, well, this use case that you are mentioning on manualual days, there's a lot of companies that have a new payload because the payload is the main data here it's gonna give you the data that you will be able to sell afterwards to use for your in a conflict, for example.
5:09: So this is a very typical use case in which one company has 12 satellites that's they're gonna launch first to the satellites will follow up.
5:19: So site dynamic distance they should be one of the main.
5:23: Features they should, they should have is the scalability.
5:27: So something that is very common is to use the same flight dynamics.
5:31: Not all flight dynamics are meant to be designed for this.
5:35: In the past, there were more like a fun dynamics, one missile and flight dynamics with the rest of the ground set, OK.
5:42: But now we are trying to, we are achieving this to, to create flight dynamic systems that are more mission cross.
5:49: For example, you could launch your first satellites with some characteristics.
5:53: But then you realize you need extra functionalities or lying in a formation.
5:59: This flight management system should be scalable to use the different services.
6:04: So that's why we are trying to, to go into more microservices infrastructures in, in our system and use the right algorithms and functionalities to allow this, to allow the operator or client to operate different satellites with the same system.
6:20: Obviously changing that configuration, but the core of the system should be scalable for this scenario that you mentioned.
6:27: From what I gather, physics is based on what the operator or customer what if I am an Earth observation constellation and there was an incident of interest.
6:36: On the ground, I want my satellites to go there and map them as much as possible.
6:42: If I am a communication satellite constellation, my goal is to provide continuous connectivity across users.
6:48: I want my users to have continuous coverage.
6:50: So the entire physics is based on the approach that the end customer or user is looking at.
6:56: Yeah, exactly.
6:56: So those decisions are made at mission analysis level.
7:01: They decide which orbit they need to low rates or to have a high revisive time ratio if you want to offset one latitude of earth or one specific country.
7:11: The flight dynamic system should be able to follow those rules that the clients or the people trading the mission are thinking of.
7:19: So in this case we are talking for example about station keeping or even how to apply these orbits.
7:25: The algorithms of the physics inside this side dynamic score should be flexible, you know, abstract enough to cope with all different methods.
7:35: Also from year to year, there's also some changes even if the nature of the mission is similar to have these services to allow different users with very different intentions to be used.
7:47: With different configurations because as you can imagine it's not the same as constellations of you or you.
7:55: From the flight damage computation point of view, there may be different approaches.
8:01: As you mentioned, a lot of the computation may happen on the ground because maybe it's resourceful to have the resources on the ground because you can scale those resources up and do our software updates and other things, but there may be also approaches to do it on our.
8:14: So what types of approaches are there for computing flight analytics?
8:19: As you mentioned, when you do things on board it's because you don't have all the way.
8:23: For example, things that could happen in a very short time, and you need your satellites to be aware of it.
8:28: They have to do it on board.
8:30: Software that is developed and is maintained and is used on the ground is usually the cost of it is lower and also if you have to do modifications and you have to do extensions to it, it's pretty much easier.
8:42: That's something that is on board that is so far tied to it to a platform to a satellite.
8:47: So then on one side 9 exists, the activities that could be planned for the old days.
8:55: For example, the information flying that is something very state of the art nowadays when the distance in that they have to fly is so small that you cannot wait until you pass through a ground station to get the information and then to send back the maneuver that you computed, you have to do it on board.
9:12: But we have distances of 50 kilometers and the 100 kilometers along the track.
9:19: This is usually if you see it in a L orbit, it would be like even 5 degrees or 2 degrees or an arc, so they are very close.
9:29: Then you can start to do things on ground and all the bigger distances will be covered on ground.
9:34: So in these activities that you have to do, for example, in the use case of formation flying a constellation flying in different orbits.
9:42: You will have first of all, the that VR satellites or to determine what are there with an OB determination.
9:50: It it's used with the telemetry and the ENSS data that you get from the satellites and then you on ground you do the process, the computationally costful process to that to me where satellites.
10:04: They propagate the orbits of those satellites in which you will.
10:09: Predict where the satellites are going to be.
10:13: And then usually the flight dynamic systems of sample orbit, they will give you the maneuvers that you need to either keep your satellites on the nominal orbits that we mentioned before that are important for your mission to chase the orbit if in case you need, for example, to do an end of life mission or the maneuvers that you need to keep them in the right distance.
10:38: When you think of going back to this approach where we talked about an early stage company looking at a constellation, when I add one satellite, it's alive, it's working, maybe I add 1 more in the next year and then maybe 10 more the year after.
10:50: The approach then would be to have the first satellite be the leader and then the other satellites following in an approach, right?
10:57: You mentioned the Interma's own FTS system, which is this leader follower kind of approach.
11:03: Are there any scenarios where it is advantageous to use this and why?
11:07: Yeah, to control mission with formation flying, there are different ways to perform these formation science activities.
11:17: One of those is I think it is very well known for people is swarm as the drones fly.
11:22: You are not evaluating distance between two satellites, but more like extensive sea of maze of the entire formation.
11:30: However, the leader follower approach gives you the advantage that it's not that.
11:36: Complex in that sense and also it's scalable in the case you say so you launch a first satellite even it is not able to be maneuver.
11:45: This satellite is not a power at all, but then you launch a second one that can follow it.
11:50: This is one of the reasons we are using this data follower that is not getting this extra complexity.
11:57: To the operations and also it's scalable because those shapes that you can achieve with formation of flying, you can also do it by combining several leaders and several followers.
12:10: The main character of a mission is the pilot and the data you get from the pilot, and the figure of merit to something that you want to keep low is the complexity of the mission.
12:20: For example, you have to combine information flying activities with collision avoidance.
12:25: If the formation flying approach is so complex that you cannot do it at the same time you are doing pollution appointments, that is very important because everyone wants to launch a constellation.
12:36: Maybe your approach is good information flying but not for the whole mission.
12:39: With leader follower, this is easy because if the leader is maneuvering the follower.
12:44: Can just follow.
12:45: So if you are doing a collision avoidance, the others will do the same Uber, so you will performing collision avoidance just competing for one satellite.
12:55: There all these factors.
12:57: Are the main factors to to use this leader follower are the main advantages.
13:03: Is there an estimate on what would be cost or even computational cost or even real cost in different approaches because all this kind of computation is done on board.
13:14: I'm guessing it is 10 times, 100 times more expensive and.
13:18: Trying to use just like TLEs from orbit and then using that to compute things on ground and then commanding.
13:25: I know this is a very hard question to answer, but I'd love to hear about your thoughts on what kind of approaches and what kind of cost factors when you do something on the ground and you have to do the same thing on boards.
13:37: This is a Volta figure, usually it's 3 times more.
13:42: Expensive to do things that go on board.
13:46: But also it makes more difficult the the maintainability, the portability, so it's not only the diet cost but the cost that you will have to entail that.
13:57: And then about the approaches that you have here when software on the ground is not scalable or it's not a mission cost, so the cost would be the entire cost of your flight dynamics.
14:06: If you need a different flight dynamics, then the cost will grow linearly with the size of the constellation.
14:13: And when you ask.
14:14: Bitco's license, you cannot afford that because, because then all the money goes on those systems and not on the data processing that at the end is what the main part in which you will get your benefit back.
14:26: The leader follow our approach, I think, is ideal for a lot of the new space scenarios, especially when we are talking about Earth observation, communication, and other types of constellations that are scale according to a phased approach.
14:39: I don't see a lot of scenarios, especially outside of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos where they're investing maybe in 10,000 satellites to having a very tight formation.
14:49: Otherwise, it seems like from what all you're saying that a leader follow our approach is more oriented towards a typical news space operator.
14:56: Yeah, exactly.
14:57: That's why we decided this approach because our clients, some of them are news space, others not that new space, but nowadays everyone is doing things as they were.
15:07: A startup, so they do this in parallel, secondary things.
15:11: Also, the leader is makes your life easier because you can easily understand what is happening.
15:16: It's like two cars, one to put in the other.
15:18: If they are too far, they have to break.
15:20: If they are too close, one has to speed, they have to break.
15:23: The new space, this is a very good use case also because it opens up the opportunity to escape up your mission too.
15:31: For example, you want to artificially growth your swash or have.
15:37: Bigger images at the same time.
15:39: What you can do is launch another satellite, put it closer to the other one, and then mane in the attitude, you can have a bigger image.
15:47: So you don't need to create a new payload.
15:49: You can use your own payload with this formation, you can size up your means and this is the approach that can be used in different missions.
15:59: Even missions that they didn't have trust that we are working also with my star, they use the vers track to get closer and far.
16:05: So you will save fuel, you won't need to take a lot for how many delta BA you use for information flying because you will do it with the geometry of your satellites.
16:16: The data follow is is one of them that to, to achieve all this low rise of complexity, mission process, and scalability.
16:25: I want to think a little bit also from the perspective of companies adopting flight dynamic systems.
16:30: Let's say I am a new space operator.
16:32: I launched my first satellite and now have 2 or 3 more on orbit.
16:36: I have never thought of flight dynamics at all because I was just trying to get my first satellite working on the second satellite upright.
16:42: Is this a typical approach?
16:43: Because when I'm starting a constellation, I'm more worried about the first sets of satellites working.
16:49: So, what is the scenario where the companies would start thinking of adopting a flight dynamic systems?
16:55: The follow-up question to that is, how easy is it to come in and adopt a slide dynamic system without having to have planned anything in-house?
17:05: What happens nowadays, this is my own opinion, my own experience.
17:08: These companies have a very good idea about their pay or what they're gonna do with the data they receives from these satellites.
17:14: When they start to grow and to get close to the launch, they, for example, they forgot that they need to have some kind of collision avoidance functionalities because otherwise the institutions, they won't let you launch.
17:27: There are a lot of satellites nowadays and having too many satellites that are unable to maneuver it's gonna be a mess in some years.
17:35: When they are designing their nation, they have this always to give global coverage.
17:39: When you are in a real environment design idea, the best forces are.
17:43: Quite high.
17:44: You need station keeping to stay in that orbit that is gonna give you the most of your payload.
17:50: Otherwise, you will use your payload 20% because you are not in the orbit.
17:54: You thought you're going to visit the place as many times as you want or you are able to put our coverage so you can have all the satellites and view as you need it for all this.
18:03: Problems you need to fight that existed.
18:06: Some companies don't realize it until it's too late because nowadays they do things in parallel.
18:11: Then when they realize they need to have a good over determination to know what the satellite is, a good edition of the satellite and also have trusting capabilities for avoid crashing your satellites or to stay in the design orbit that is gonna give you the benefits back and then at that moment they realize they need a fight system, but at the end, all the issues they need a flightnamic system.
18:33: How complex or if you can have a a more basic version of it, depending on your mission.
18:41: Probably nowadays, I guess that many times they don't realize how complex or what the detail of flight dynamics they need until they are growing their own.
18:50: That's the approach changed drastically if it is already a very well planned formation and in that case to the operator then design their own FPS or adopt other ones.
19:00: If they go for formation size, then this is a very complex thing.
19:04: What they usually do is.
19:06: They try to contact companies as thema, you know, to, to do this because then they're gonna need too many people.
19:12: They won't focus on other parts like creating the con ops and the other things that they need for operations.
19:17: So yeah, in this case when you have complex scenarios of both to installation, even if it's amazing flying, just the station keeping and keep track of all these collision avoidance tasks.
19:29: They need flight dynamics that is being improved in all the missions because if you don't, if you do it from scratch.
19:37: You don't have validated omission.
19:39: So yeah, in this case is when the companies built for a standard namic system that's the one we provide here.
19:44: Are there any limitations to this kind of leader follower approach, maybe even certain upgrades that you want to do for such an approach for the future?
19:53: So the limitations of this system is not that good when you have a very specific formation shape.
20:00: So you imagine that you want to be kind of pyramids or something that is like following a a a thetaedral shape.
20:10: In this case, there are other approach that are better.
20:14: One is just to, to keep the the it's satellite in the vertex and not have a relative distance to them, but to this visual age.
20:23: That would be a case in which you will use the approaches.
20:28: However, it's true that those approaches are more difficult, for example, you have to do operation avoidance with, with one of the satellites.
20:37: You have to be with all differently, so you will have to put more things on it and more use cases scenarios in what if I have to do operation avoidance.
20:46: So the advantage of neither other way is that even if it is not straight out for these kind of cases, you can use it for these kind of cases because you can either put its its satellites in the vertex of the safe.
21:00: Or you can put one satellite that you imagine in perfectly in the vertex and the others and moves later live to it.
21:07: , the disadvantage of the DM flower could also be called the advantage because if you play with the mathematics, you can use it also for these cases.
21:16: However, it's not a straight use for the in all the cases all the disadvantage but easy to solve because we have done this before is if you have always one reader.
21:27: And the others are always following the leader.
21:30: The followers are always consuming and are the ones to be.
21:34: We have two solutions.
21:35: One is very basic and easy for operations.
21:38: You chase the roles, you swap the roles within time.
21:41: So one month, once I try is the leader, then you can change easily just by configuration, which is the leader and when is the follower.
21:49: When you are computing the maneuvers, you can search the B.
21:53: So in the computation of the relative distance, one is the leader of the follower.
21:58: When you apply the maneuver, you share the maneuver.
22:00: So if you have two cars, despite one car always speeding up from braking, you share the, the, the speeding up acceleration and the braking between the two cars.
22:09: That's the solution.
22:10: It's one of the disadvantages how to share the resources, but as it's not that difficult to, to do, you can always do it in these two alternative solutions.
22:22: Final question to you, which types of operators would consider what type of flight dynamics is?
22:29: Can you name which scenarios and which types of organizations?
22:34: It would be ideal using your leader follower based FTS and at what point of time would it be ideal for them to approach you?
22:44: OK, so the typical missions that are meant for our synamic systems are LEO satellites, constellations, either optical payloads or any other kind of payloads.
22:55: If you have the intention to do that, even if you start to the advanced satellite, thema is a very good option.
23:01: It's our flight now is called Orbit because it's also scalable.
23:04: Even if you don't know if you will do information flying or other typical constellation approach, as I told you before, this is the following scalable, you can.
23:13: At the moment, and you will have all the other services that you need for a formation flight.
23:17: So you will have all the information plan for a constellation of one satellite station keeping mane to carry the satellite interfaces with third parties as SSA agencies, database with the teleHB or even mission planning.
23:33: In that case, if you have to do a, a LEO satellite or a Leo constellation with 4Fociation, Terma is ideal.
23:41: We also have capabilities for telecommunication satellites.
23:46: And another use cases that our.
23:52: Site exists is able to be deployed on cloud environments and so far it's kind of a microser system.
23:59: You will be able to scale if you have indentation to scale up your constellation.
24:03: This is the use case typical that we will, and then if doing follow-up projects of your first mission, you want to do formation side, all these things I told you the station keeping collision avoidance, they won't change a lot because the advantage of this little follower approach is that One is doing the station keeping, the other is keeping the relative distance.
24:24: You don't need to create a new approach for the station keeping or the pollution avoidance services if you need to escape out your mission.
24:34: Thank you very much, Sergio, for taking the time today.
24:36: I think this gives our listeners a very good overview of what does a flight dynamic system do, what are the intricacies, what are the scenarios in which people can adopt such a system.
24:46: For any of the follow-ups, obviously, we will link Dharma's product on the Satearch web page for people to then follow up with you if they want to get a demo or ask more questions, we will link everything in the show notes.
24:58: Thanks for taking your time again.
24:59: A very interesting conversation and I'm open to do any demo of it to anyone who is interested.
25:06: So thank you very much for having me here.
25:09: Thanks for joining me today for another exciting story from the space industry.
25:13: If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, please feel free to write to me at info@satsearch.com.
25:19: And if you're looking to either speed up your space mission development or showcase your capabilities to a global audience, check out our marketplace at satsearch.com.
25:29: In the meantime, go daringly into the cosmos till the next time we meet.