ESTCube-LuNa: Thesis topics 2024
Hello Space Students,
We are a team of professors, scientists, students and high school pupils who recently published an Aerospace journal article called “Electric Sail Test Cube–Lunar Nanospacecraft, ESTCube-LuNa: Solar Wind Propulsion Demonstration Mission Concept”. Now, we are making plans to reach a new generation of lunar electric solar wind sailors, navigators and communicators. We are available as supervisors on the following topics in all study levels — BSc, MSc and PhD. Your interest to work on novel engineering and research problems is the most important requirement.
E-sail experiment modelling, orbital analysis and the Electric Sail Mission Expeditor (ESME): For the ESTCube-LuNa article we have made a thrust-equivalent simulation in General Mission Analysis Tool (GMAT) where an electric thruster is used instead of the E-sail. We would like to port the simulation to ESME and integrate it with DOCKS orbit propagator. By doing so, we will have a fully-controllable E-sail simulation environment where control and thrust performance will be estimated with a realistic Coulomb-drag interaction and in realistic solar-wind conditions. The simulation will set the radio frequency, or RF, ranging experiment requirements.
Communication design and signal path modelling: For ESTCube-LuNa we plan to use repurposed 16 m and 32 m radio telescopes in Irbene, Latvia, for communications and RF ranging. For planning operations, we need to create a simulation environment where the link budget, data budget and RF ranging experiments are performed in realistic orbits and the signal path is modelled in the cis-lunar system.
Optical celestial navigation development and Real-Time 3D: For ESTCube-LuNa navigation, we have conceptualised a Triangulated Celestial Navigation (TCN) system which uses five miniature cameras with 120° field of view for all-sky coverage. It tracks the Moon, the Sun and the Earth for determining the spacecraft position in lunar orbit. For future algorithm development, we have made a proof of concept Real-Time 3D (RT3D) solution in Unreal Engine 5.
Attitude determination and control: A mission in lunar orbit requires new approaches in attitude determination and control as compared with our previous ESTCube-1 and ESTCube-2 missions in low Earth orbit. The work involves modelling and selection of sensors as well as development of signal and image processing algorithms for executing on on-board field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and microcontrollers.
System design, engineering and requirements: The ESTCube-LuNa system design and engineering are major challenges to making the mission a success. Our plan is to upgrade the cubesat-style project to one which clearly tracks requirements and provides Product and Quality Assurance (PA/QA).
For most topics, you can work from your home university and we can act as external supervisors. Our consortium includes UT Tartu Observatory in Estonia, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, University of Pisa in Italy, Ventspils University of Applied Sciences in Latvia, Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia and Aalto University in Finland.
Please contact us at andris.slavinskis@estcube.eu
Thanks,
Andris Slavinskis
Associate Professor
UT Tartu Observatory
