Space Design Tool

Project Scope

Currently the software only features a module for mission analysis which was inherited from the previous Space Trajectory Analysis Tool by ESA which has already been updated to compile despite an untouched code base since 2011 on current machines. The source code already compiles on Gentoo Linux and Ubuntu Linux. It is planned to revise the code to also support other Linux distributions, Windows and Mac OS X. Starting from successful builds on various platforms, the code base will be upgraded to replace the currently used Qt4 with the latest Qt5 library. Further modifications will include the seperation of the code base into two parts, one handling the computations involved in the software, and the other providing a graphical user interface. Based on this framework more modules will be developed to cover more aspects of the design of spacecrafts and space missions. A non-exclusive list of considered modules include:

simulation of conditions during re-entry
simulation of the thermal design of the spacecraft
simulation of the damage by space debris
simulation of the attitude and orbital control system
simulation of particle radiation
simulation of rocket engines
simulation of on-board control systems
simulation of vibrations during launch phase
simulation of electromagnetic compatibility

Efforts in the project are currently focused on the evaluation of appropriate software libraries for the different tasks. After completion an environment will be designed to combine the different libraries in a proposed co-simulation environment to allow coupled simulations of different solvers.

Roadmap

alpha version 0.1.0: successful build and packaging of current code base on all major supported platforms (50 percent complete)
alpha version 0.1.1: restructured code base in simulation code and graphical user interface code
alpha version 0.2: new graphical user interface based on Qt 5
alpha version 0.3: introduction of the thermal analysis tool

Downloads

Currently the software is distributed in the form of the git repository hosted at Github. An experimental ebuild for Gentoo based systems is available on the gentoo-overlay of the Dwarf-Planet-Project. Packages for Debian based systems, Windows and Mac OS X are currently work in progress and will be provided here when the packaging process is completed.