AIT Model Philosophy

Overall Model Philosophy

For the Iris program, the only spacecraft model that will be built is the final flight model spacecraft. However, the program is building off of significant design heritage from the TSAT line of UMSATS spacecraft, including access to spacecraft level vibration testing data from previous TSAT models. There will also be FlatSat testing performed prior to integration of subsystems with the spacecraft structure. A major portion of the FlatSat testing will be long duration burn-in tests of simulated on-orbit functions, in order to identify software bugs.

The following figure shows the various model philosophies used for different subsystems of the spacecraft before integration onto the final flight model spacecraft. As is illustrated below, the thermal control and structure subsystems are the only two subsystems which will have no models prior to the flight model and will go straight to the flight model spacecraft.