- Details
- Last Updated: 20 January 2013 20 January 2013
Orbital Sciences Corporation
Principal software engineer for several satellites. Responsible for software system design and development; subsystem interface design; command and telemetry definitions; ground station to spacecraft interface definition; software coding standards; reliability and multi-satellite configuration issues; command & telemetry definitions; fault detection and correction software; and hardware interface drivers.
Orbcomm
Orbcomm is Orbital Sciences global communications satellite network consisting of 28 low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites. The system is used to send and receive two-way alphanumeric packets, similar to two-way paging or e-mail with global coverage.
My responsibilities:
- Principal software engineer on the satellite software development team. Responsibilities included software system design, subsystem and common (cross subsystem) software development.
- System Design
- Overall software system design
- Developed spreadsheet database to define ground station to spacecraft and inter-subsystem command and telemetry interfaces. Database also is used to manage data specific to individual satellites (orbit parameters, calibration parameters, etc.).
- C include files, with command and telemetry tables, are automatically generated for both the ground station and the satellites to enforce these interfaces, help prevent human error and increase reliability.
- Developed preliminary Access database to replace Excel spreadsheets.
- Software coding standards.
- Configuration management.
- Reliability and multi-satellite configuration issues.
- Command & telemetry definitions.
- Subsystem Development
- Developed the satellite's gateway (ground station interface subsystem) software.
- Common Code Development (code resident on several subsystems).
- System level and subsystem level fault detection and correction software (Health and Maintenance).
- Digital Signal Processor (DSP) driver (dsp communications, telemetry, code loading, memory washing)
- SCP (Serial Communications Port) bus driver for communication with 3-wire serial devices (plls, adcs, dacs, etc)
- Table (spreadsheet) driven command handling, and utility routines.
- Satellite Specifics
- VxWorks operating system - WindRiver's Orbcomm page
- 68302 processor
- C/assembly language
APEX
APEX (Advanced Photovoltaic and Electronics Experiment) was Oribital's first satellite and an Air Force experimental satellite to test advanced electronic components in the space environment. - JPL Mission and Spacecraft Library:APEX, Gunter's Space Page:APEX
My responsibilities:
- Lead software engineer responsible for the software system design, development and integration.
- System Design
- Software system design
- Ground support equipment definition
- Command and telemetry format definitions
- Subsystem interface definitions
- Subsystem Development
- Spacecraft Control Module (SCM subsystem)
- Frame Formatter
- Command Sequencer
- File Backhauler
- Payload Services Module (PSM subsystem)
- Payload Interrogators (DOS, PP, CRUX, FERRO)
- Spacecraft Control Module (SCM subsystem)
- Common Code Development (code resident on both subsystems)
- System level and subsystem level fault detection and correction software (Health and Maintenance).
- 68302 communications drivers (HDLC, SCLC, ascii, OX.25)
- Satellite Specifics
- OSX operating system (a custom version of the Precise MQX operating system)
- 68302 processor
- C and assembly language
- Acted as technical assistant to the Air Force supporting on-orbit operations.
X-34
X-34 - An air-launched, hypersonic rocketplane being developed by Orbital for NASA's Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) program.
- Real-time simulation development
- Simulation of LN100 inertial navigation subsystem.
- Simulations of other X-34 subsystems.
- DOS drivers to configure, transmit and receive messages thru multi-channel serial communication boards (digi board, 202, others).
BATSAT / T1
Teledesic's T1 Satellite - The world's first commercial 'Ka' frequency band LEO spacecraft (previously called the Broadband Advanced Technology satellite (BATSAT)).
- Developed the satellite's gateway (ground station interface subsystem) software (the design is common with the Orbcomm satellite design).
- Launch press release
Seastar
Seastar - Orbital's second PegaStar satellite, now called OrbView-2 carries the Sea Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) and provides high-fidelity color images of the Earth.
- VRTX operating system
- Modifications and debugging of Global Positioning System (GPS) driver.
- Modifications and debugging of OX.25 (an internal messaging protocol) driver.
- Matrix math library optomization
- Compiler/floating point math library debugging (Linking, NAN problems)