HARISH JOGLEKAR
Articles written in Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy
Volume 38 Issue 2 June 2017 Article ID 0035 Review Article
Planning and Scheduling of Payloads of AstroSat During Initial and Normal Phase Observations
R. Pandiyan S. V. Subbarao T. Nagamani Chaitra Rao N. Hari Prasad Rao Harish Joglekar Naresh Kumar Surya Ratna Prakash Dumpa Anshu Chauhan B. P. Dakshayani
On 28th September 2015, India launched its first astronomical space observatory AstroSat, successfully. AstroSat carried five astronomy payloads, namely, (i) Cadmium Zinc Telluride Imager (CZTI), (ii) Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC), (iii) Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), (iv) Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) and (v) Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) and therefore, has the capability to observe celestial objects in multi-wavelength. Four of the payloads are co-aligned along the positive roll axis of the spacecraft and the remaining one is placed along the positive yaw axis direction. All the payloads are sensitive to bright objects and specifically, require avoiding bright Sun within a safe zone of their bore axes in orbit. Further, there are other operational constraints both from spacecraft side and payloads side which are to be strictly enforced during operations. Even on-orbit spacecraft manoeuvres are constrained to about two of the axes in order to avoid bright Sun within this safe zone and a special constrained manoeuvre is exercised during manoeuvres. The planning and scheduling of the payloads during the Performance Verification (PV) phase was carried out in semi-autonomous/manual mode and a complete automation is exercised for normal phase/Guaranteed Time Observation (GuTO) operations. The process is found to be labour intensive and several operational software tools, encompassing spacecraft sub-systems, on-orbit, domain and environmental constraints, were built-in and interacted with the scheduling tool for appropriate decision-making and science scheduling. The procedural details of the complex scheduling of a multi-wavelength astronomy space observatory and their working in PV phase and in normal/GuTO phases are presented in this paper.
Volume 42 All articles Published: 29 June 2021 Article ID 0062 MISSION
Innovations in the AOCS of AstroSat spacecraft
JASVINDER SINGH KHORAL R. ADITYA HARISH JOGLEKAR PRASHANT KULSHRESHTHA MANOJ KUMAR DEEPA PRAMOD A. M. NAGALAKSHMI
AstroSat is India’s first mission dedicated to space-based Astronomy and carries a complement of instruments sensitive over a wide spectral region covering visible, ultraviolet, soft X-ray and hard X-ray bands. The spacecraft platform provides the required stability, pointing, power, thermal control, and interface requirements. Among the critical functions of the Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) were, manoeuvre the spacecraft from one target source to another in an optimal way while avoiding the sun, compensate for the rotational disturbance torque created by the scanning of the SSM payload on the other payloads, primarily the UVIT payload, provide for calibration of all the payloads, which involved manoeuvring through 2-dimensional target patterns. All the above novel control functions, along with the routine house-keeping operations, were designed, developed, and tested extensively on ground, beforedeclaring them as flight-worthy. The payload performance and the resulting science are a testimony to the excellent performance of the on-board Control System.
Volume 44, 2023
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