FFIORD/PRISMA Seminar in Toulouse

CNES has participated to the PRISMA mission through the FFIORD experiment that consisted in the demonstration of rendezvous and formation flying operations based on a new generation of relative sensors.
The nominal mission performed from August 2010 until March 2011 relied entirely on the radio-frequency sensor (FFRF sensor developed by TAS and cofinanced by CNES/CDTI).
Some additional activity was performed in October-November 2011 in the context of the extended mission. The overall mission has been quite successful and allowed to acquire a significant experience in this new technology domain.

CNES has therefore decided to organize a one day seminar to share with his partners some of the FFIORD results and explore the potential perpectives of the different techniques being involved.

This event will take place at CNES on

March 7th 2012 from 9:00 to 17:00 (Leonard de Vinci room).

Morning will be dedicated to the presentation by the project participants of the FFIORD mission / results as well as an overview of the different project innovations (software development, operations organization, ...)
Afternoon will include presentations from the CNES Directorate of Strategy and Prospective of the different programmatic domains that may benefit from these rendezvous and formation flying techniques. It will be followed by an overview of the current state of the art and the identification of the technology bricks that still need to be developed / demonstrated.
An open discussion will close the day.

A detailed agenda will be sent mid-February.

If you and some of your colleagues are interested by this event, please send personal information (name, nationality, passport number, birth date and place) by February 24th to annie.duthy@cnes.fr, with a copy to michel.delpech@cnes.fr and dominique.seguela@cnes.fr
In case some participants do not have the European citizenship, please send these data before February 15th 2012 so that the CNES access paperwork can be completed in due time.

Tango and Mango in formation flying
At 710 km altitude, Tango satellite from Prisma-FFIORD mission fly over the blue planet, flying through the night at 27000 km/h.

Contrary to what can be believe, this image is not an artist image. It is a photography taken during October by Mango, the main satellite of this technological demonstration mission, with which Tango was dancing. The satellites were flying at this exact moment in close formation, only separated by 15 m.

Read the complete news (in French).

Photography of Tango taken by Mango

FFRF commissioning: approaching the ultimate performance
Since the start of the FFRF commissioning one week ago, the subsystem has been put through a series of functional tests and has proven quite resistant to different contingency scenarios (link breakdown, power switching, etc.). Thanks to the AFF (Autonomous Formation Flying) variable trajectory and high reactivity from the SSC operations team, we have also been able to test the instrument for different inter satellite configurations (various relative distances, velocities, pointing and antenna selection on TANGO). This also worked very well...

Read the complete news.

FFRF fine distance measurement over a 14 hour period

First FFRF measurements
In parallel with the AFF Early Harvest, the FFRF subsystem commissioning started today with the first power-up of the FFRF instruments on Mango and Tango at 18:33 and 18:39 UTC. During the pass that followed ten minutes later, CNES was able to follow in real time as both receivers locked successfully onto the RF signals transmitted by the two FFRF transmitters, thus establishing the first RF metrology link in orbit...

Read the complete news.

First coarse distance measurements

Mission PRISMA 2 satellites (MANGO and TANGO) have been successfully separated on August 11 at 17h51 UTC. This event is the first step of the formation flying for PRISMA.
More information available on SSC web site as well as CNES' FFIORD experiment web site: http://www.prismasatellites.se/?sid=9028.

Image of Tango taken by Mango

The in-flight commissioning continues: TANGO FFRF sensor has been powered on.

The LEOP ("Launch and Early Orbit Phase") operations are successfully completed. Prisma is now in in-flight commissioning phase: "combine initial operations".

First "results" of the in-flight commissioning: MANGO FFRF sensor has been powered on.

Successful launch of PICARD satellite.

(MP4 format ~6.5 Mb)