Supported Projects
Space Technology 7 / Disturbance Reduction System The ST-7/DRS mission is designed to demonstrate that a solid body can float in space completely undisturbed. The mission will apply new technologies to detect small disturbance and issue small corrections to allow a test mass to float with no external disturbances. The technologies validated in the mission will be applied to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). ST-7/DRS is an instrument flying on the European Space Agency's (ESA) LISA Pathfinder mission.
the Hammers Company, working with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, is responsible for providing the Dynamic Control System (DCS) software portion of the ST-7/DRS experiment to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. the Hammers Company is developing and testing the DCS software based on GSFC control algorithms, and providing this software to JPL for integration into the experiment.
Besides the DCS flight software, the Hammers Company is also providing
several VirtualSat simulators. The components of the VirtualSat
simulator include models of the various sensors and actuators on the
spacecraft, the dynamics of two free-floating test masses and the
spacecraft, and various disturbances on these three bodies (such as
solar pressure).
The DCS flight software is being tested in an all-software VirtualSat environment before delivery to JPL. In this configuration, the flight software is compiled into a VirtualSat component and added to the configuration, allowing the flight software source code and control algorithms to be tested in a closed-loop environment.
Additionally, several VirtualSat machines will be provided to JPL, GSFC, and ESA in hardware-based configurations. At JPL and GSFC, VirtualSat will model the spacecraft dynamics and various hardware components while interfacing to a computer running the fully-built, complete flight software. At ESA, VirtualSat will model the micro-Newton thrusters and interface to both the complete flight software and the ESA-developed spacecraft simulator.
