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Spacecraft Design Program at the Naval Postgraduate School Brij N. Agrawal Distinguished Professor Department of Mechanical and Astronautical Engineering Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA 93943 agrawal@nps.edu

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a review of the spacecraft design program at the Naval Postgraduate School. This program is part of the space systems engineering curriculum. In this curriculum, the students take at least one course for each spacecraft subsystem. The spacecraft design is a three course design sequence. The first course is on spacecraft design tools. The students become familiar with the spacecraft design tools that are used in the final design course. The tools include STK, IDEAS, NASTRAN, and MATLAB/Simulink. They also become familiar with system software such as Aerospace Corporation Corporation Conceptual Design Center tools and spacecraft cost estimation. The second course is on spacecraft system engineering where they review the design aspects of all subsystems, systems engineering, and do an individual design project. In the final capstone course, they do a team spacecraft design project. The spacecraft performance requirements are given by a sponsor. The students have mentors in each subsystem from industry, Aerospace Corporation and government laboratories. The final review is attended by senior spacecraft designers from industry, Aerospace Corporation and government. The Naval Postgraduate School has a Spacecraft Design Center, which is dedicated to these courses. The paper will also present results of a spacecraft design project, Space Based Radar, recently undertaken under this program.

I. INTRODUCTION

Space systems are playing an increasingly critical role in war fighting efforts of the US Department of Defense (DoD). It is critical that military officers are knowledgeable in space systems to perform their tasks properly in requirements, science and technology/research and development, acquisition, and operation. There is currently great emphasis in DoD to educate Space Cadre to perform these tasks. Recently, there has been schedule delays and cost over-run on several space programs. One of the reasons has been attributed to the lack of adequate space systems engineering knowledge from DoD personnel.

The objective of space systems program at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is to educate DoD space cadre personnel to fill each link in the National Security-Space Chain: requirements, science and technology/research and development, acquisition, and operation. A break in this chain will result in failure to deliver national war fighting capabilities. This paper provides an overview of the space systems program at the Naval Postgraduate School with an emphasis on the spacecraft design program.

“Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2005, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Agrawal, B. (2005, June), Spacecraft Design Program At The Naval Postgraduate School Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15109