ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO10550
Open Date: 30/11/2020
Closing Date: 25/01/2021 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 20.197.07
Prog. Ref.: Discovery
Budget Ref.: E/0600-06 – Discovery
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU+CA+SI+LV
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 50-100 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / Other
Technology Domains: Others
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality
Department: Systems Department
Division: Adv. Concepts & Studies Office
Contract Officer: Knuter, Mateusz
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 30/11/2020
Update Reason: Tender issue

The recently launched OPS-SAT mission is the first CubeSat mission designed by ESA, with the ambitious goal to provide a low-cost, open and flexible flying laboratory a powerful platform for in-orbit demonstration of new, innovative control systems and software. This is achieved through a novel system architecture consisting of both off-the-shelf components and custom development to enable a service oriented architecture (using the CCSDS Mission Operations Services framework). The orbiting test-bed includes many subsystems including an experimental computer and processing platform, AOCS, GPS module, S- and X-band communications payloads, a high-resolution camera, optical uplink receiver and a software-defined radio front end.The project team is large and diverse, consisting of both academic and industrial stakeholders. This combination of complexity and diversity resulted in several systems engineering challenges, including common understanding and communication of complex concepts, adherence to an agreed baseline, configuration control and changes to the system architecture late in the engineering lifecycle. This central idea of this activity is to reverse-engineer the OPS-SAT system utilising a selected MBSE approach (and tools). The modelling aim shall be to alleviate previously encountered pain points and to provide a reference model from which future IOD missions can be prepared utilising an MBSE approach.