Title: Model-based system engineering to support the verification process of a cubesat attitude determination and control subsystem
Abstract: The CubeSats platforms utilization in scientific missions enables faster life cycles rather than custom-made satellite platforms. It is possible to deliver to scientists, in a shorter time, the means to conduct their research. However, some missions are requiring more complexity of these CubeSat platform and the development phases must ensure that the often COTS (Commercial Of the Shelf) system operates according to the needs imposed by the onboard payloads. NASA Space Flight Project Life Cycle from NPR 7120 5E process, presented in the NASA System Engineering Handbook, ensures that architecture definitions need to meet all mission requirements and deployments until logical and physical architecture verification tests. But the time required to apply the complete process exceeds the agile development cycle of CubeSat based space projects, so it is common to adapt it to fulfill what is necessary. The SPORT project, from the acronym “Scintillation Prediction Observations Research Task”, is a CubeSat-based mission that aims to understand the preconditions that lead to the equatorial plasma bubbles that are the principal sources of reflections in the ionosphere, causing strong scintillations in the radio signals that pass through them. The scientific instruments requirements strongly impacted the development of the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS), where the result of its behavior in orbit is vital to the mission success. So, in this complex subsystem, the application of Systems Engineering provided the necessary deployment of the elements that lead to a need of a more efficient and traceable verification and validation of the project within the mission requirements. Therefore, this work presents the results of the application of Model-based System Engineering (MBSE) in the ADCS subsystem of the SPORT project, to map the subsystem architecture without losing the traceability of the requirements, with the proposed AIVV procedures of assembly-integration-verification-validation and technical information of the components.