INTECS has consolidated experience in the development of On-Board Satellite Software, by participating to the realization of several programmes such as XMM, ROSETTA, ENVISAT and MARS EXPRESS. Moreover, INTECS brings into the Space Programmes its own know-how in Software Engineering, Operating Systems, Hard Real Time (HRT) design and analysis methodologies based on HRT-UML, ADA and HOOD.

 

Common characteristic of all those activities is the high level of criticality necessitating the adoption of techniques able to guarantee deterministic system behaviour (HRT, MIL-STD-1553B bus, etc).

 

These systems are developed according to the ECSS Space Programme Standards.

On-Board Applications

ROSETTA and MARS EXPRESS
- Design and implementation of the test campaign for the “Star Trackers” software systems related to the Pluto and Herschel-Plank missions. 
- Design Requirement Analysis and implementation of the software for the “Star Trackers” of the Navigation Camera related to ROSETTA and MARS EXPRESS satellites. The system includes acquisition and transmission of raw images, Fixed Stars and "Large Objects" tracking.

 

XMM
Analysis of Design Requirements and Implementation of the “Star Tracker” Software for the XMM satellite. The system includes tracking of fixed stars.

 

ENVISAT
Planning and Development of software for the “On-Board Central Facility” of the ENVISAT satellite: includes the Implementation of important control functions such as: “Power Supply”, “Thermal Control”, Housekeeping, protocol of communication of Payload and LEOP functions.  

 

Microsatellites
Design of functions for the  “Autonomy” for the Italian microsatellites platform: “MITA”, re-configurable for a wide range of payloads.
Participation to the MIOSAT programme, specifically the Payload for Satellite Navigation based on Software Defined Radio techniques.