The Professional Edition of the Spacecraft Control Toolbox provides everything in the CubeSat and Academic versions, with the addition of advanced tools for attitude and orbit estimation, sensor and actuator modeling, and subsystem analysis. Toolbox applications include control system design, nonlinear simulation, orbit analysis and mission planning including interplanetary trajectories, spacecraft design and layout, trade studies, and attitude and orbit visualization.

Key Features

• Spacecraft control system design and analysis.
• Attitude dynamics modeling including flexible and multi-body spacecraft.
• Orbit dynamics analysis and simulation.
• Attitude estimation including star identification.
• Orbit determination using continuous-discrete and unscented Kalman filters.
• Ephemeris calculation including astronomical almanac and JPL ephemerides.
• Environmental modeling including atmospheric, planetary albedo and radiation, gravitational, and magnetic field.
• Disturbance calculation from detailed spacecraft geometry and properties specification.
• Pointing and propellant budgeting.
• Spacecraft visualization in 3D.
• Generating, calculating and managing mass properties.
• Thermal analysis.
• Propulsion system and launch vehicle analysis.
• Link analysis and budgets including optical and RF systems.
• CubeSat mission analysis.
• Importing spacecraft geometry from AutoCAD DXF and Wavefront OBJ files.

For information on the toolbox contents you can check out the User’s Guide or view the online API. The API gives the documentation for all of the functions and demos in the toolboxes. Our toolbox brochure provides details on all our products and a case study. The comparison table [pdf] gives you more information on different versions of the toolbox.

Add-On Modules

Formation Flying

This module provides dynamics, control, and estimation support for formations of satellites. Circular and eccentric orbits are supported. The module features a decentralized formation flying (DFF) control system developed via SBIRs for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Fusion Propulsion

This module provides a complete, integrated set of tools needed to perform the design and analysis of nuclear fusion propulsion systems. It includes functions for nuclear fusion power generation, nuclear fusion physics and propulsion. It has a complete set of functions for point reactor designs. All fusion reactions including Deuterium-Tritium, Deuterium-Helium 3 and Boron Proton can be analyzed. Additional functions provide tools for sizing shielding and cyrogenic cooling systems.

Solar Sail

This module’s high-fidelity disturbance model enables users to simulate complex solar sail shapes without resorting to analytical approximations. You can study the nonlinear effects of different sail material properties and propellantless actuation schemes. The combination of these special sail CAD and dynamics models with control design tools from the core toolbox provide a complete sail attitude and orbit control analysis solution!

Spin Axis Attitude Determination

This module provides a complete, integrated set of tools needed to perform spin-axis attitude determination using horizon sensor and sun sensor measurements. Spin-axis attitude determination requires at least one horizon sensor and one single-axis sun sensor.

Optical Navigation

This module provides a complete, integrated set of tools for optical navigation using cameras. The module ncludes both single frame orbit determination and Unscented Kaman Filter (UKF) based orbit determination. The UKF can handle any type of measurements including star angle centroid pairs, GPS, position measurement from Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) measurement sources, range and range rate and LIDAR/LADAR. Numerous examples are provided including interplanetary, cis-lunar, Mars orbit, Lunar orbit, Earth orbit and lunar landing.

Launch Vehicle

The Launch Vehicle module builds on both the Spacecraft Control Toolbox and the Aircraft Control Toolbox to create a tool set for conceptual studies including sizing launch vehicles, finding launch windows, modeling rocket dynamics and simulating launch trajectories from Earth up to orbit.