ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9100
Open Date: 01/12/2017
Closing Date: 20/02/2018 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 17.1EC.02
Prog. Ref.: TRP
Budget Ref.: E/0901-01 – TRP
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / AOCS & GNC / Guidance Navigation Control (GNC) / Other
Techology Domains: Space System Control / Control Systems Engineering / Control Design and Verification
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality
Department: System, Software & Technology Department
Contract Officer: Seynaeve, Christophe Rene R.
Industrial Policy Measure: C1 – Activities in open competition limited to the non-Larg…
Last Update Date: 01/12/2017
Update Reason: Tender issue

This activity shall investigate, trade-off, and preliminary prototype a control system for the upcoming L3 mission, taking advantage of the results and lessons learnt from the Lisa Pathfinder mission. The study shall trade-off different control system architectures and design methodologies to satisfy the challenging requirements of this mission. Preliminary prototyping using a representative simulation environment shall also be implemented. This activity will allow to lower the development risk of this expensive and complex control system before phases A/B1.It is expected that the control system for the L3 mission will need to control several degreesof freedom with different actuators at different frequencies, yielding a tightly coupled, multiple-input multiple-output system. Even though the Lisa Pathfinder (LPF) mission has proven some of the control system technologies required to achieve this, the architecture of the LPF Drag Free Attitude Control System (DFACS) has been designed to best fit the motion equations and requirements of LPF, which are less challenging than those for L3. For this reason, an in depth theoretical investigation of the possible control system architectures and control design methodologies for L3 is required. The drag free control architecture for this mission is key forits performance and therefore an in depth trade-off at mathematical-theory level, aided by simulations shall be prototyped.This activity is proposed as a bridging phase between the activities executed for the design, development, and early operations of the control system of the LPF mission and those for L3. It will allow to gather the results and lessons learnt from LPF project and inject this knowledge quickly into the early phases of the design and development of the control system for the L3 mission.The software finalproduct of the activity will serve as a framework for ESA to test case any changes in the evolution of requirements of the L3 mission during its early phases.Tasks:1) State of the art and definition of the elementary equations of motion for the L3 mission, including a de-coupling analysis to identify possible control system design simplifications. 2) Trade-off different control system architectures and advanced, robust control system design methodologies to preliminary prototype the drag free control system.3) Implement the different proposed options into a representative simulation environment and analyse the different proposed solutions to findthe best candidate. 4) Provide conclusions a and identify way forward for phases A/B1.Procurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to EMITS news „Industrial Policy measures for non-primes, SMEs and RD entities in ESA programmes”.

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