The 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies

Citation

(2006), "The 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 78 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2006.12778bac.002

The 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies

The 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies

Keywords: Conferences, Space technology

The 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies (RAST 2005) was held in Istanbul (Turkey) in June, 2005. The conference was organised by: Aeronautics and Space Technologies Institute (ASTIN), Air Force Academy, Turkey; Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK); Bogazici University, Turkey; Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, co-sponsored by AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics), in technical co-operation with: IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society; IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society; AAAF Group Regional Centre, France; ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing).

The planned conference had the main objective of providing a forum for the presentation and review of recent developments in space technologies, and for new forthcoming applications especially emphasising direct benefits to the economy and society.

Sefer Kurnaz (Turkey), General Chair of the International Conference RAST 2005 and the members of Organizing Committee, took an active part in organising and conducting the symposium.

The technical program of RAST 2005 contains 150 regular, 32 special and 25 interactive (poster) session papers and three plenary presentations from 38 different countries. Prominent scientists and experts, who could through much light on the present state of research and art in the respective trends of topics of the symposium were invited to lecture at plenary sessions.

Ghassem Asrar, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate, USA opened the first plenary session with the lecture on “The US vision for space exploration: NASA earth and space science contributions”. In his extensive and interesting lecture he describes the NASA mission in developments of space technologies and the USA Space program.

Marc Garneau, President of Canadian Space Agency, CANADA in his lecture on “Space in the service of society: a Canadian case study” reviewed the history of development of space technologies in Canada, missions of Canadian satellites and the Canadian space program. To date, there have been 11 flights by Canadians, with CSA Astronaut Steve MacLean scheduled to fly in February 2006. In less than half a century, space has become an integral part of the lives of Canadians, from wireless communications that bridge vast distances, to global weather and climate change predictions, to understanding the mysteries of the Universe.

Joo-Jin Lee (South Korea) in his plenary lecture “2005; The year ‘zero’ of space Korea” described certain satellite programms in Korea. In 2005, five (5) national satellite programs are on the way in Korea. First of all, KOMPSAT-3 and KOMPSAT-5 are on the list. KOMPSAT-3 is a low earth orbit satellite whose payload is an electro-optical camera. KOMPSAT-5 is also a low earth orbit satellite whose payload is SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) to increase the image acquisition frequency. Korea is also planning to start geosynchronous orbit satellite development with a foreign partner this year. Korea is also carrying out a micro-satellite program whose name is STSAT (science and technology satellite) series program. Besides these satellite programs, Korea selects the candidates for Korean first astronaut this year.

Over 200 reports were presented in the conference in the following sections.

Special session on energy from space and related space environmental issue (7 reports)

The report “Sustainable humanosphere with energy from space” by H. Matsumoto and N. Shinohara (Kyoto University, Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Japan) drew the general attention. A space solar power system (SSPS) and a microwave power transmission (MPT) is one of the most important system and technology for humanosphere in future.

Interesting information was presented in the reports: “Advanced space technology for 21st century energy systems: solar power from space” by L. Summerer (European Space Agency (ESA)-ESTEC, The Netherlands) and F. Ongaro (ESA-HO, France); “Building a space solar power system” by M. Oda (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency); “Possible influences of SSPS on the space plasma environment” by H. Usui, H. Matsumoto and Y. Omura (Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Japan).

Special session on student satellite projects (4 reports)

The report “COMPASS-1 pico satellite: magnetic coils for attitude control” by A. Aydinlioglu and M. Hammer (University of Applied Sciences Aachen, Germany) describes the required hardware components and the design and development of the electromagnetic torquers.

The report “Experience and methodology gained from 4 years of student satellite projects” by L. Alminde, M. Bisgaard, D. Bhanderi and J.D. Nielsen (Aalborg University, Denmark) presents the experiences gained and lessons learned from the work with student satellite projects at Aalborg University as well as the methodology used to manage these projects.

The report “The SSETI-express Mission: From Idea to Launch in one and a half Year” by L. Alminde and M. Bisgaard (Aalborg University, Denmark), N. Melville (ESA, The Netherlands) and J. Schaefer (Stuttgart University, Germany) describes the organisation behind the project and the mission of the satellite. Further it provides a technical overview of both the space segment and the ground segment together with key lessons learnt from the process of building a student satellite with widely distributed teams.

Satellite technologies (23 reports)

In their interesting report “Full attitude determination specification – small libration version – of the Alsat-1 first Algerian microsatellite in orbit” A.M. Si Mohammed (Division de Mechanique Spatiale, Algeria), M. Benyettou (Universite des Sciences et de la Technologic “Mohamed Boudiaf, Algeria, M.N. Sweeting and J.R. Cooksley (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, United Kingdom) present the full attitude determination specification – Extended Kalman filter using magnetometer and sun sensor measurement of the Alsat-1 first Algerian microsatellite in orbit.

The report “Development of the HAUSAT-2 nanosatellite for low-cost technology demonstration” by Y-K. Chang, B-Y. Moon, K-L. Hwang, S-J. Kim and S-J. Kang (Hankuk Aviation University, Korea) addresses the development and design of the HAUSAT-2 (HANKUK Aviation University SATellite-2), which is nano class ultra-small satellite, being developed by SSRL (Space System Research Lab.) of Hankuk Aviation University. The main mission objectives of the HAUSAT-2 satellite are to study the scope of activities and ecology of animals using Animal Tracking System (ATS) and collect the space information data from Electrik Plasma Probe (EPP) as a space science payload.

In the report “Spacecraft energy storage and attitude control” by A. Altay (TUSAS Aerospace Industries Inc., Turkey) and O. Tekinalp (Middle East Technical University, Turkey) the conventional technologies like electrochemical batteries, reaction wheels and control moment gyroscopes were compared to the promising integrated power and attitude control system with variable speed control moment gyros (IPACS-VSCMG) technology. For this purpose, various energy storage and attitude control system conceptual designs were carried out, and the results were compared.

A flight qualified micro sun sensor is being developed and flight qualified for future Mars missions by S. Mobasser, C.C. Liebe, J. Naegle and C. Lee (California Institute of Technology, USA) and was presented in the report “Flight qualified micro sun sensor for Mars applications”. The micro sun sensor, which is basically a small pinhole camera, consists of a small mask with pinholes, placed on top of an image detector. Images of the sun are formed on the image detector when the sun illuminates the mask. Image processing is performed in the sun sensor that outputs sun centroids.

In the report “Applications of MEMS devices in nanosatellite” by Y. Zheng, L. Bin, Y. Shijie and Z. Gaofei (Tsinghua University, P.R.China) some MEMS (micro electro-mechanical system) devices for nanosatellite and picosatellite were introduced, which have been tested on NS-1 nanosatellite or on ground.

Aerospace structures (11 reports)

Reports of this section are mostly theoretical. A new approach for fault diagnosis was presented by A. Fijany and F. Vatan (California Institute of Technology, USA) in the report “New approach for efficient diagnosis of large and complex space systems”. The obtained results showed the advantage of new algorithm over the traditional branch-and bound algorithm; in fact the algorithm had achieved several orders of magnitude speedup over the standard algorithms.

D.E. Gunduz, A. Unver, F.E. Orhan and M.A. Ak (TUBITAK Defence Industry Research and Development Institute, Turkey) in the report “Aerodynamic heating effects on a flying object at high speeds” presented the equations for the aerodynamic heating, calculations, test data and comparison of the results. Verification tests showed that the 3D computer models give good results. Therefore, temperature distribution on the external store for any flight mission at any environmental condition can be calculated using these models.

O. Kilit (Ege University, Turkey) in his report “Application of a multi-stage bogie suspension system to the planet exploration vehicles” investigated the application of innovative multi-stage bogie suspension system to a rough terrain vehicle and effects of changing the parameters of this suspension system on vehicle’s stability.

In the interesting report “Structural health monitoring applications for space structures” by I.N. Tansel, P. Chen, X. Wang (Florida International University, USA), A. Yenilmez (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey) and B. Ozcelik (Gebze Institute of Technology, Turkey) use of the s-transformation and the genetic algorithms combination had been proposed for structural health monitoring applications. The use of s-transformation for inspection of the signal, and fitting time delay-attenuation (DA) models by using genetic algorithms had been proposed. Robustness and performance of this approach was evaluated at the noisy and unfavorable conditions in this report.

F. Elaldi (Turkish Military Academy) in his report “An overview for structural health monitoring of composites in aerospace applications” reviewed for structural health monitoring technologies developed for aerospace applications, specifically for the composite structures. He remarked that future trend for the aerospace applications is to implement new sensing technologies that can be integrated into the structural material system at any point in the component fabrication process which make the composite aerospace structure intelligent as it is.

Space propulsion (10 reports)

The report “Ground testing of a liquid fueled rocket motor” by G. Puskulcu, B. Sumer, D.E. Gunduz, C.Yildirim, B. Yazici, F.E. Orhan, L.O. Gone and M.A. Ak ((TUBITAK Defence Industry Research and Development Institute, Turkey) contains the detailed explanation of the first Turkey operational liquid fuelled rocket motor that has been designed, manufactured and tested. The ground tests were performed at the static test ramp.

In the report “The low power hollow thruster for orbit correction system for small, mini and micro satellites” by T.A. Maksymenko, A.V. Loyan and N.N. Koshelev (National Aerospace University “KhAI”, Ukraine) some methods of low-power Hall thruster developing and their advantages and disadvantages were discussed. The test results and main parameters of new law-power thruster laboratory model SPT-20M were presented. Comparative characteristics of SPTmodel and low-power hollow thrusters developed by leading world specialists was shown.

The interesting report “Xe Ion Plasma Thruster XIPS-200 for orbit correction of geostationary communication satellite” by N.P. Stepanushkin, N.N. Koshelev, M.T. Aliyeva, A.V. Loyan and E.I. Ishenko (National Aerospace University “KhAI”, Ukraine) asserts that one of the more developed, approbate in space condition, reliable and having a big work resources electric propultions is ion plasma thruster (IPT). At the National Aerospace University “KhAI” had realised development and tests of ion plasma thruster IPT-200 with radial magnetic field for compensation solution of north-south orbit disturbance of geostationary communication satellite. Carried out tests of IPT-200 with the heater less hollow cathode as an electron source of the main discharge have shown, that one of factors of efficiency improving of the thruster is optimisation of the basic units, the cathode selection on a nominal working current.

M. Lange, F. Pap¹ and M. Rath (EADS Space Transportation GmbH, Germany) in their report “The PM2x family of propulsion modules” gave information about development of a EADS-ST family of low cost monopropellant propulsion modules for small satellites. The objective was to develop a “plug-in” module that could be easily adapted for use with various satellite platforms and missions. An ITAR-free version is also being developed. Concurrent engineering and a success-oriented qualification philosophy are being used to achieve qualification in a very short time.

The authors assert that three versions are currently available, two of which use entirely non-ITAR components.

Navigation (9 reports)

The report “Hybrid synthesizers in space: Galileo’s CMCU” by F.J.M. Carrillo, A.A. Sanchez, L.B. Alonso and A. Espacio (Tres Cantos, Madrid) is devoted to CMCU (Clock Monitoring and Control Unit) emphasizing the hybrid synthesizer concept and showing the results obtained in the engineering qualification model (EQM) and in the first two flight models.

In the report “Neural networks based approach for fine tracking in satellite navigation systems” by M. Musso (University of Genoa, Italy), G. Gera (CNIT-DIBE Unit University of Genoa, Italy), A. Cattoni, C.S. Regazzoni (University of Genoa, Italy) a novel method to solve the fine synchronization problem in GNSS receivers was presented. The aim of this study is to find an alternative solution to the classical non-coherent delay lock loop. In particular, the proposed method based on self organizing map (SOM) a particular type of Neural Networks, allows to improve the performances in multipath channel.

The report “Determination of GPS positioning errors due to multi-path in civil aviation” by A. Franchois and L. Roelens (Ghent University, Belgium) presents a simulation tool to quantify positioning errors by combining a ray-tracing based three-dimensional multipath propagation model with a standard GPS receiver model. The software can be used to perform accurate simulations for realistic configurations of the environment and the transmitting and receiving antennas and to investigate the effect of varying receiver parameters on the multipath error.

The report “Overbounding non-zero mean Gaussian ranging error for navigation integrity of LAAS” by I. Sayim (gebze Institute of Technology, Turkey) and B. Pervan (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA) asserts that one of the most critical elements in the development of local area augmentation system (LAAS) architecture is navigation integrity. The LAAS is a differential satellite-based navigation system architecture designed to provide navigation services for civil aircraft users during precision approach and landing. In the design of architecture, one of the most challenging and remaining unsolved technical problems is to provide sufficient integrity-related broadcast information (i.e. pseudorange broadcast correction error standard deviation) to aircraft. The authors assert that biases in satellites ranging cannot be broadcast to aircraft and need to be accounted for in overabounding process at LAAS ground facility (LGF) prior sigma broadcast.

The other sessions in the conference were: Special session on postgraduate space education (5 reports) Special session on ISPRS (6 reports) Special session on responsive space (2 reports).

Special session on latest developments in forest fire risk management using earth observation and communication satellites (5 reports) special session on space propulsion and energy from space (3 reports) communication (13 reports) remote sensing (39 reports) synthetic array radar (8 reports) space sciences and bio space (9 reports) space weather (11 reports) social benefits (8 reports) country papers (7 reports) poster papers (25 reports)

A brief review of such a representative international congregation as the RAST-2005 conference cannot cover the whole work. Exhaustive information can be found in its proceedings, which should be attractive for engineers, academicians, space company managers, businessmen, educators, students and government officials including those of space agencies, especially from those organizations with space faring aspirations.

Chingiz HajiyevProfessor, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Istanbul Technical University