STK – Satellite Stationkeeping and EMLP-2 Orbital Design

[BD_PolyMTL]

I have a couple of questions about the STK as follows

1. Does STK offer a "stationkeeping" feature for satellites or orbiters? Does STK quantify the power/energy consumed by the thrusters as a function of time during maneuvers for stationkeeping?

Without the stationkeeping, the initial deployment of satellites in a constellation is not maintained during longer simulation time intervals. Hence, it is imperative to use more satellites to reduce the GAP (no LoS connection).

2. Is there any resource showing how to design orbits specifically around the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point (EMLP)-2 using Astrogator or other propagators?

Thanks

[Evan Sokolson]

Hello and thank you for your question!

1. STK does offer station-keeping features, an example of which is shown in the following article from our Knowledge page:

https://analyticalgraphics.my.site.com/faqs/articles/Knowledge/Perform-basic-station-keeping-with-Autosequences

 

After following those instructions, you can perform analysis on your thrusters using our Report and Graph Manager feature.

 

2. We have a tutorial for how to plan a mission to the Sun-Earth L1 point here (you can modify the Astrogator parameters and reference axes to model the Earth-Moon system instead):

https://help.agi.com/stk/#training/Astro_SunEarth.htm?TocPath=Tutorials%2520and%2520Training%257CLevel%25203%2520-%2520Focused%2520Tutorials%257CFeature%2520Specific%257CAstrogator%257C_____14

 

If you have any further questions, please reach out to us at support@agi.com or call us at 610-981-8888 and we will be happy to help!

 

Best,
AGI Technical Support