Applying Mainstream Design Approaches to Spacecraft Communications

Space is difficult and unusual. Many of the things we take for granted on the planet's surface don't work for engineering spacecraft. Because of this, we've built an edifice of space design techniques to mitigate the challenges with high probability. The problem is, this edifice causes spacecraft to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take upwards of 2 years to build and test (designing can take 4-6 years). The high price tag decreases further the acceptable failure risk, leading to a ratcheting number of tests and design reviews. A movement of people is trying to intelligently increase the acceptable risk profile by single digit percents, leading to logarithmic cost decreases. We will go through the space environment, look at the challenges, and learn about how one can overcome them and still use mainstream low cost design techniques.

Speaker: Helen Lurie, Bitbeam Communications