LaACES Schedule

LSU 01/17/2006

For the semester and the next few weeks

Spring 2006 1

What you will be doing • Effort now shifts to designing, building and flying your payload.

• You will need to apply everything you learned last semester

70% of student built payloads suffer a partial or complete failure.

How well you fare will depend almost exclusively upon how well you manage your project!

LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 2

Spring 2006 Timeline

LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 3

The Design Phase

“Paper” study of all issues to establish major concepts and plans • Little to no hardware testing or prototyping • Define science goals and objectives • System level design (subject of Lecture 3) – System requirements derived from goals and objectives – Identify major subsystems and interfaces • Concept hardware and software design – Derived from system requirements and constraints – Identify parts, costs & availability • Establish tasks, schedule, resource needs and plans for remaining phases of life-cycle • Develop preliminary risk assessment & management plan • Phase terminates with Preliminary Design Review (PDR) LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 4

Preliminary Design Review (PDR)

• The PDR should cover results from your design phase including: – Goals & objectives – Preliminary System design – Concept hardware & software design – Tasks, schedule, resource needs, long-lead items – Preliminary risk assessment & management plan • Should show that you have “thought the problem through” • Include written document and oral presentation – Format of document was discussed in PM - Lecture 8 – Document template on the LaACES website • LSU faculty will attend & participate in the PDR LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 5

Specific PDR Plan

• Next four weeks you will work on your PDR document – Specific sections will be due each week – Each section will be reviewed and returned for your updates • Sections through Mission Objectives due 1/24 • Sections through Payload Design due 1/31 • Sections through Payload Development, Construction and Mission Operations due 2/7 • Sections through Project Management, Master Schedule and Master Budget due 2/14 • Final document due 2/20, PDR on 2/21 LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 6

Effort for this week

• Establishing a clear understanding of your goals, objectives and requirements is necessary for a correct payload design – Determine what you must do – Determine what can be removed – Set constraints on how to do it • ALL of your planning and payload design flows from this critical first step • A considerable amount of time, resources and effort in a project can be wasted if a set of requirements is not initially, clearly defined LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 7

Science Background

Requirement flow

Mission Goal LSU 01/17/2006 Science Objectives Technical Objectives Requirements Payload Design Spring 2006 8

Mission Goal

• A mission goal is a simple, straight forward explanation of … – What you intend to do – Why you are doing it – Where you are doing it • For example, the mission goal for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) is very simple “… to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars.” LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 9

Objectives

• Objectives include the specific items that need to be achieved by the mission / payload.

• Science Objectives include specific measurements derived from the “science background” that are needed to satisfy the mission goal – For example, what does “characterize … rocks and soil” actually mean?

• Technical Objectives include specific physical characteristics needed to satisfy the mission goal – For example, what does “search for … a wide range of” actually mean? LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 10

Requirements

• Derived directly from the science background, mission goal, science objectives and technical objectives • Constrains and specifies how the payload is constructed and operated – Requirements should point back to a specific objective • For example, one MER requirement may have been how many rocks they would have to sample – This would, in turn, set a requirement on rover range – Required range would then set a requirement on durability of the rover wheel system LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 11

So, for tonight …

• Update, if necessary, the LaACES participants information list.

• Clean up and put away your hardware. You will not need any of this for several weeks.

• Determine who is working on what payload this semester – You may want to focus on only two payloads • Download the PDR template • Establish your tasks for the coming week • Setup your team meeting times LSU 01/17/2006 Spring 2006 12