Attributes Balance on the Adoption of Platform Based Solutions for Satellites

This paper aims to propose the principles of a systems architecting method to assess and guide the conceptual design of platform based solutions for satellite space applications. The method helps the developers to assess the platform changeability to achieve future missions with a minimum impact in terms of modifications and to assess the platform comprehensiveness in terms of possible missions. Changeability attributes applicable to the platform aims to implement parameters like robustness, flexibility, agility, etc. showing the capacity of the platform to comply, fast and with minimum modifications, the future missions. Comprehensiveness aims to balance platform comprehensiveness attributes in terms of missions and the platform efficiency based on the additional mass necessary to cover space environment requirements like altitude (drag, radiation and torque), satellite pointing, etc. The more over dimensioned, the less efficient is the satellite. Conclusions are that the method promotes a great enhancement on the productivity of platform based solutions conception while increasing the quality of the conceptual phase results.