SMASS – A Lightweight Satellite Simulation Framework for Concurrent Engineering in Education

Abstract

The “Satellite Mission Analysis and Simulation System” (SMASS) for small satellites developed at the Technical University Berlin (TU Berlin) is mainly used in the education of aerospace students at universities with the focus on understanding the relations between system parameters [1]. The design of a satellite with SMASS is based on the dynamic simulation of entire mission scenarios, which goes beyond the classical approach of designing and simulating uncoupled subsystems with static dependencies. However, after a detailed analysis of SMASS, it turned out that it is highly recommended to re-engineer SMASS to make it flexible for future extensions. The goal was to develop a new highly modular structure. After an introduction, this paper presents the basic layer structure of the new modular SMASS framework. In the next sections, the different layers are explained. This includes their functions and the connections between them. In the end, an example explains the new feature of comparing different satellite configurations using only one simulation run.