Assessing the impacts of fractionation on pointing-intensive spacecraft

Fractionated spacecraft consist of physically independent, "free-flying" modules composed of various subsystems. Thus, a fractionated spacecraft might consist of one-module responsible for the power generation and storage, another module responsible for the communications and computing, another module responsible for the attitude and guidance determination, another module responsible for the payload, and so on. Fractionated spacecraft are of particular interest for pointing-intensive, remote sensing mission spacecraft because of their ability to physically decouple subsystems and payloads that truly need precise pointing, thereby potentially reducing the lifecycle cost of fractionated spacecraft relative to a comparable monolithic spacecraft, for a given space mission. Additionally, using fractionation to decouple pointing-intensive subsystems and payloads may potentially reduce the mass and size of the module containing the payload in a fractionated spacecraft (i.e., Payload Module) relative to that of a comparable monolithic spacecraft. If fractionated spacecraft prove to reduce the mass and size associated with the Payload Module, for a given pointing-intensive, remote sensing mission, it may enable pointing-intensive fractionated spacecraft to have longer space mission lifetimes than comparable monolithic spacecraft.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• O'Neill, Michael Gregory

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Annalisa L. Weigel.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/58389

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/58389