RSAA Colloquia / Seminars / Feast-of-Facts: Monday, 05 June 2017, 11:00-11:20; Duffield Lecture Theatre


ANU/SERC students

"ANU Guide Star Laser Interface Project"

Space assets such as communication satellites and the International Space Station are at serious risk from collision with over 300 000 items of space debris in orbit. Currently, only a fraction of these objects can be monitored by space debris tracking stations. To enable more accurate tracking from the EOS Laser Tracking Station, a Guide Star Laser (GSL) will be installed to allow for adaptive optics (AO) corrections of the infra-red laser beam. The focus of this project was to develop a system to interface three different GSL models on the EOS 1.8m telescope. Over the last four months, a team of engineering students from the ANU have worked to determine technical requirements for this interface using a systems engineering approach. We have analysed over 150 requirements and developed a comprehensive verification and validation scheme to address system conflicts. In addition, a conceptual design in the form of a CAD model has been produced. This presentation will cover what the team has achieved, as well as the individual contributions each team member.