A constraint based approach for building Operationally Responsive Space satellites

The Operationally Responsive Space program requires flexible and responsive satellites to meet their user´s needs. Traditional satellite design methods are typically iterative processes that optimize individual components, subsystems, and ultimately the entire satellite. This study focuses on developing a new approach for creating Responsive Satellites from Plug-and-Play components. The aim is to create an approach that quickly evaluates a wide variety of possible satellite configurations and identifies the best configurations that meet the user´s needs and constraints. Satellite configurations are created by matching locations on the satellite structure with Plug-and-Play components. Various constraints are derived from the user´s inputs at different levels of the configuration process. As the user provides more information related to Plug-and-Play satellite, additional constraints can be applied to reduce the number of Plug-and-Play satellite configurations resulting in manageable numbers of configurations from which the user can ultimately select the final configuration.