Preliminary Design and Development of MAST, a Multivehicle Analysis and Separation Tool

Abstract

The recent surge in demand for launch opportunities of multiple small satellites has stimulated further development of dedicated dispensers and new multi-payload concepts. A large market of adapters and deployment technologies has been created to compactly house future small satellites on existing launchers. However, these new launch scenarios come with a new set of challenges and requirements regarding satellite separation dynamics which are very particular to each dedicated mission or dispenser. Separation dynamics modeling in a multi-body simulation environment is therefore a critical capability to develop regarding those future mission scenarios. This motivates the objective of this paper which is to present the preliminary design and development of a dedicated multi-body dynamics simulation tool denominated MAST (Multivehicle Analysis and Separation Tool) to provide the means to verify the required separation requirements and to verify absence of collisions between the separated satellites and the upper stage during the separation processes. The implementation of this tool and a test-case are presented together with some results from a realistic use-case scenario involving a hypothetical VEGA SMSS flight mission. This preliminary design and development of MAST shows satisfying results in terms of the tool's requirements also briefly outlined in the paper as well as its potential to assist in future launch scenarios involving multivehicle separations.