(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05-01)
Arunkumar, Ebenezer; Lightsey, E. Glenn
The VIrtual Super Optics Reconfigurable Swarm (VISORS) mission is a distributed
telescope system consisting of two 6U CubeSats that utilize precision formation flying to detect
and study the fundamental energy release regions of the solar corona. The inherent
complexities and risks associated with two spacecraft operating in close proximity, as well as
the unique restrictions of the spacecrafts’ design, make careful autonomous execution crucial
to the success of the mission. To address these challenges, this paper outlines the development
of the Hosted Software Application (HSA) flight software which manages the Guidance,
Navigation, and Control algorithms, the payload finite state machine, and the spacecraft and
formation level fault management system. An overview of the HSA provides context for the
motivation and requirements driving the design of the flight software system. The architecture
of the HSA is presented and shown to be derived from the Mission Events Timeline (MET) for
each of the relevant phases of the mission. Finally, a brief outline of the implementation and
testing of the software is discussed.