Speaker
Description
This talk aims to provide a practical example of the successful application of an entirely COTS-based GPS receiver in various space projects such as sounding rocket flights and LEO satellites missions. Almost any Earth-orbiting satellite mission planned and realized during the last two decades has, at any point, considered to employ a GNSS receiver as part of the satellite. However, for the majority of these projects, a fully space-qualified GNSS receiver is out of reach due to the extremely high costs typically associated with such hardware. For projects with a more limited budget the use of a COTS-based version of the desired device is typically the only viable alternative. Driven by this motivation, DLR’s space flight technology group has commenced to explore, develop and test COTS-based GPS sensors about 20 years ago. As an outcome of this work, among others, the Phoenix GPS receiver for space applications has been developed, tested and finally made available to numerous small- and mid-scale space projects. In this talk, the Phoenix GPS receiver will be introduced in more detail. An overview about the conducted space qualification program and the so far gathered flight heritage of the sensor will be provided.
