Editor's note: This page was last updated on 25 May 2009
The Project for On-Board Autonomy (Proba) is a technology demonstration mission of the European Space Agency, funded within the frame of ESA’s General Support Technology Programme. It is managed by ESA’s Control and Data Systems Division within the Department of Electrical Engineering, part of the Directorate for Technical and Operational Support at ESA/ESTEC.
Work on the project began in mid-1998 and Proba was successfully launched on 22 October, 2001, initially for a one-year mission.
Proba objectives
The objectives of Proba are:
in-orbit demonstration and evaluation of new hardware and software spacecraft technologies
in-orbit demonstration and evaluation of onboard operational autonomy
in-orbit trial and demonstration of Earth observation and space environment instruments
Modal media
Proba mission
A high degree of spacecraft on-board autonomy, together with ground-station automation, considerably reduces the need for ground operations. Proba aims to use and demonstrate automatic functions, both onboard and in the mission ground segment.
Proba onboard automatic functions include:
nominal operation and resource management
computation and control of camera pointing and scanning from raw inputs from users (target latitude, longitude and altitude)
payload operations scheduling and execution
data communications management
Proba ground-segment automatic functions include:
spacecraft pass operations
spacecraft performance evaluation
high-level user requests to spacecraft via Internet
The spacecraft's commissioning phase has been successfully completed and payload data are being provided to users. Images are also processed by ESA to demonstrate the high stability and pointing accuracy of the spacecraft.
On the basis of the in-orbit data received, an extension of the operational mission beyond the nominal one year is planned.
Modal media
Proba users
Users of the Proba satellite to date include:
|
Modal media
Proba payloads
Proba contractors
ESA’s small Proba satellite celebrates five years in space
Modal media
Linkuri similare
Third Party Missions technical site
Space Engineering
CHRIS instrument
rămâneți informat
Abonează-te la newsletter-ul nostru pentru a primi cele mai recente știri, actualizări despre misiuni și informații exclusive direct în inbox. Fii printre primii care află despre proiectele și descoperirile noastre viitoare.