space-engineering

Calculate launch cost for a payload to orbit — find cheapest vehicle or analyze specific one

Satellite communications link budget — EIRP, G/T, C/N, margin calculation

Full mission architecture — from requirements to vehicle selection, delta-v budget, staging, and cost estimate

Plan orbital trajectory — Hohmann transfers, launch windows, delta-v requirements

Side-by-side comparison of launch vehicles — cost, payload, reusability

Expert spacecraft guidance, navigation and control (GNC) / attitude determination and control systems (ADCS) analysis — sensor selection, actuator sizing, pointing budgets, disturbance torque analysis, control mode design, and momentum management. Use when designing ADCS architectures, selecting star trackers or reaction wheels, calculating gravity gradient torques, building pointing error budgets, or evaluating slew performance. Trigger with "attitude control", "ADCS", "reaction wheel", "star tracker", "pointing budget", "GNC", "guidance navigation", "CMG", "momentum wheel", "magnetic torquer", "sun sensor", "disturbance torque", "slew maneuver", "detumble".

Expert ground segment and mission operations engineering — ground station network design, pass planning and contact analysis, CCSDS TT&C protocols, data processing pipelines, and MOC architecture. Use when sizing ground networks, calculating contact windows, estimating daily data volume, designing operations concepts, or selecting between DSN/ESTRACK/KSAT/commercial providers. Trigger with "ground station", "pass planning", "contact window", "mission operations", "telemetry", "telecommand", "DSN", "ESTRACK", "KSAT", "data downlink", "MOC design", "CCSDS".

Expert launch operations and integration engineering — launch site selection, rideshare vs dedicated trades, adapter and separation system selection, countdown timelines, deployment sequence design, and launch window calculation. Use when selecting a launch site, planning a launch campaign, sizing adapters, calculating latitude penalties, designing deployment sequences, or evaluating rideshare options. Trigger with "launch site", "countdown", "rideshare", "deployment sequence", "launch window", "ESPA", "separation system", "launch campaign", "launch manifest", "range safety".

Lead systems engineer and mission architect — the integrating function across all spacecraft subsystems. Owns top-level budgets (mass, power, data, delta-v, thermal, link, cost), requirements decomposition (L0-L4), mission phase planning (Phase 0 through F per ECSS/NASA), design review gates (SRR, SDR, PDR, CDR, TRR, FRR, LRR), trade study methodology (Pugh matrix), and system-level verification. Trigger with "mission architecture", "systems engineering", "mass budget", "power budget", "trade study", "design review", "PDR", "CDR", "requirements decomposition", "margin policy", "mission design".

Orbital mechanics and astrodynamics for spacecraft mission design. Covers Keplerian orbital elements, two-body and restricted three-body problems, Hohmann and bi-elliptic transfer orbits, constellation design using Walker delta patterns, launch window analysis, porkchop plots for interplanetary trajectories, ground track analysis, and station-keeping budgets. Trigger with "orbit", "transfer orbit", "constellation", "launch window", "Hohmann", "Keplerian", "inclination change", "delta-v", "ground track".