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"Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
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Fri, 16 Mar 2001 10:10:57 +0000
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Unfortunately I can't remember any books on the subject, but I've passed your
message on to a friend who used to do mission analysis type things at what was
Matra Marconi Space.

My knoweldge of what satellites did came from the Space Technology course that
was run by Southampton University. Excellent course actually, content was pretty
dull, but it was live-in -> cheap beer, lots of socialising etc etc :-)

John

>It looks as if I might (stress might) be given the job of Software Team
>Leader
>for the Satellite Avionics of the FEDSAT project, Australia's first
>homegrown
> Satellite in 30 years (Hurray for us!).

>Naturally it's being done on the proverbial shoestring.

>Is there anyone on this list with experience in the problem domain
>who can recommend some good, cheap books on the basic theory that
>I can use to teach the newbies on the project? It shouldn't strictly
>be neccessary, but I always like having everyone on the team to have
>a reasonable basic knowledge of the theory of what we're doing, just
>as an additional line of defence against stupid mistakes. So we know
>our Apogee from our Perigee, what an Attitude Control System does,
>how it works, how often (about) we should be triggering measurements
>etc. A Gut feel for things, in other words. Right within an order of
>magnitude.

>Thank God it's being done in Ada-95, so many errors normally found in
>Software ( exceeding table size etc) won't be in. But this has a
>downside: we can reasonably expect the software to do exactly
>what we intend it to do, and that means requirements bugs, like
>the ones that killed the Mars Lander and Ariane V's first mission,
>are likely to be terminal. So additional defences in this area are
>Doubleplusgood. I want the most junior intern who's never seen a
>satlleite before to be able to say "isn't that supposed to be in km
>not ft?" if the numbers don't look right by an order of magnitude or so.
>Even if - especially if - it's in an area they aren't concerned with.
>
>I believe in being original with my mistakes - not repeating errors
>others have made before.

>So... is there a "Satellites for Dummies" <g> out there?




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