Satellite System

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Space flight activities are currently in transition. This leads to a change from former concepts using reliable, cost intensive and low performance technologies towards approaches based on riskier, however cost efficient and highly performant technologies. This New Space development is currently lead by USA. In low Earth orbit (LEO) this development is already applied on a large scale and more and more compact, high performance and cost efficient commercial components are utilised on satellite missions. The exploitation of higher orbits with those components is however extremely challenging due to the high radiation conditions there. Even with radiation hard components these orbits are rarely used. Nonetheless, the exploitation of these orbits provides an immense potential to relieve the highly employed lower orbits and is extremely relevant for missions leaving the Earth orbit, since they have to pass these critical orbit areas.The University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Space Systems is aiming to advance the exploitation of MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) using the small satellite mission ROMEO (Research and Observation in Medium Earth Orbit), employing cost efficient and yet reliable technologies. The ROMEO satellite shall be launched to LEO and, by using its own propulsion system, will then reach an elliptical orbit that has its apogee in MEO and its perigee in LEO. This ensures an operation in the radiation belt and still a dependable disposal according to the European Code of Conduct for Space Debris Mitigation.The ROMEO mission has two major goals: The demonstration of new technologies basing on Commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) components within the environmental conditions of the MEO and the scientific observation of Earth and space weather.The engineering scientific goal of the ROMEO mission is the investigation of relevant technologies enabling future satellite missions that are exposed to critical radiation conditions; those are in particular a robust and powerful satellite avionics core, an innovative green propulsion system as well as an adaptive communication system. The mission furthermore includes an Earthshine telescope as scientific payload, to observe one of most important parameter for climate change, the Earth albedo – it is one of the key values to evaluate the Earth radiation budget.The apogee of the ROMEO mission’s target orbit is within the Van-Allen radiation belt. The radiation belt plays a major role for the space weather and shall be analysed by the ROMEO mission. For this purpose, the mission includes an instrument package measuring space radiation and the magnetic field of Earth. The unique shape and attitude of the ROMEO orbit makes the mission specifically interesting for space weather analysis.