ENVISION An Interplanetary Mission to Venus for Concurrent Design and System Engineering

For my thesis in Thales Alenia Space, I had the opportunity to explore first-hand how the design of a complex space system is made in an industrial reality. I was so inserted inside the design team of EnVision, where I also had the chance to see some strategies adopted to achieve the concurrent design. EnVision is an ESA programme that aims to have a Venus-orbiting probe for the mid of the 2030s, collecting many precious data to understand the mechanics that forced this planet to become so different from the Earth. The mission will provide an “all-around” orbital exploration of the celestial body, from its atmosphere to surface and subsurface, thanks to its state-of-the-art payload suite. It will be composed of: •??VenSAR, an advanced radar to map the planet’s surface (it will work radiometer and as an altimeter), provided by JPL. •??A VenSpec assembly composed of three spectrometers to observe the surface and the atmosphere of Venus. •??An SRS (Subsurface Radio Sounder) to investigate the first layers of the surface. •??An RSE (Radio Science Experiment), to investigate Venus’s gravity field exploiting TT&C system. The programme is currently at Phase B, where two bidding companies (Thales and Airbus) are prepping two drafts, one to be chosen. I had thereby the occasion to investigate the Thales proposal. Thales Alenia Space Italia is now the Prime contractor in the development of the Thales proposal, taking the place of the French division (in charge of the previous phase). The thesis is this articulated in four chapters, each describing one aspect of my works inside Thales. 1.??The first chapter will explore the world of concurrent design and how it has been implemented in the EnVision team, also taking into account the need to migrate all data from TAS-F to TAS-I. 2.??The second one will describe the EnVision proposal I had access to, focusing a little bit more on the power subsystem (because it was “needed” for the works described in the last chapter). 3.??The third chapter explores some functionalities of one of the tools used to model EnVision, IDM-CIC, and a possible alternative to it, COMET (currently under study inside the company), to compare the two. A brief “spin-off” of my analysis will focus on the possible interaction of COMET with another tool used inside Thales, DOORs, to manage Specifications. 4.??The fourth chapter will describe at last the job I took care of for the EnVision team: the refinement of the analysis of the Scientific Timeline and the development of a tool to automatise as much as possible such study.