Simple attitude visualization tool for satellite operations

Abstract

The attitude data delivered by a satellite are three-dimensional. This characteristic makes it difficult for the operation engineers to immediately interpret them. As a matter of fact, operations of low-Earth orbiting satellite usually impose to plot these attitude data in order to analyze different situations such as a sun-pointing phase, a slew maneuver during a data-take or a dump over a ground station. Finally one tries to get a three-dimensional image of the situation from many one-dimensional plots, which is time-consuming and susceptible to errors. As a consequence, an attitude visualization tool has been developed to quickly analyze and represent attitude data, as a complement of flight dynamics analysis. Such a tool has been implemented for the BIRD mission and had to comply with some constraints: a simple and low-cost design coupled with an easy-to-use, operation-oriented philosophy.