Flight dynamics multi-mission software development for optical link planning and execution

Abstract

The Generic Planning Tool (GPT) is a new software package being developed by the Flight Dynamics team at DLR. In an era where laser communications are becoming more and more relevant to data transmission for space missions, the GPT’s purpose is to compute highly accurate visibility windows and provide a wide variety of support information for both satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite links. What sets the GPT apart from previous products, is its shift from mission-specific to multi-mission and being able to accept various orbit and attitude data formats, thus enabling the support of multiple missions from DLR and external clients with flight dynamics information for mission planning applications. Its two main components are the core libraries written in Fortran, which serve as the powerhouse for the orbital mechanic’s computations, and the microservice architecture, enabled by JSON input/output files and Python scripts, which implement an automatic request response service accessible over the network. This thesis will present why, how, and which GPT software functionalities were developed and tested during the internship at the German Space Operation Center.