Software package «Integral» for modeling space constellations and space vehicles

Abstract

The aim of the work was to create a software package for modeling the solution of target problems by multi-satellite constellations. The software consists of modules for the dynamics of the center of mass of the satellites, remote sensing of the Earth, satellite communications (including routing of messages over inter-satellite communications), space monitoring and others. The main feature of the implementation was the mathematical and computational optimization of calculations, which made it possible to carry them out on a conventional computer without involving additional computational power. In the course of the work, corrections to the Everhart method were proposed to improve the trajectory integration step. Parallel implementation also helped to significantly speed up the calculations. To illustrate the work, examples of solving two different problems are given: calculating the optimal orbit for the task of monitoring outer space and solving the problem of determining the minimum number of satellites needed to scan the border of the Russian Federation once every half an hour. A feature of the soft is the work with the constellation as an integral object at the level of setting tasks and the subsequent analytics of its solution, which is presented in the form of information on target tasks, subgroups of the constellation, spacecraft and the entire constellation.

Keywords

• multi-satellite constellations
• spacecraft
• mathematical modeling
• science-intensive software package
• remote sensing
• space communication
• space monitoring