Design and Development of Grounding Architecture, and Analysis of Plasma Environment for ROMEO Small Satellite Mission

Sammanfattning

Amidst overly saturated LEO and GEO orbits, the lower region of MEO remains rather unexplored, offering a potentially reliable solution for the increasing number of satellites being launched. The Research and Observation in Medium Earth Orbit (ROMEO) satellite mission, developed at IRS at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, aims to demonstrate new technological capabilities in this region using a cost-effective approach. The plasma environment in MEO is largely uncharacterized and is of particular concern due to spacecraft charging and the associated risk of electrostatic discharges. Therefore, a robust grounding architecture is essential to mitigate the harmful effects of spacecraft charging. This thesis presents the design and development of a grounding architecture for the small satellite ROMEO, operating in the MEO environment. This involves adapting the established standards and guidelines by ESA and NASA to the constraints of the ROMEO mission. As part of the work, a Requirements and Verification Matrix has been produced based on the ECSS requirements.Additionally, since ROMEO spends a significant amount of orbital time period in LEO, a simplified simulation using a representative satellite geometry in LEO environment has been performed and analysed in this work. This analysis further strengthens the understanding of foundational concept as well as provides a practical link between theoretical knowledge and realistic mission scenarios. The adapted code used to model the satellite as well as a guideline for running a LEO simulation in SPIS has also been provided in the thesis