Space Expertise

With respect to space software engineering I gained experience in both, ground segment and space segment. Some references are for

Ground Segment:

  • antenna control software for ZDBS,
  • multi mission control software for GSOC,
  • inter-agency communication software DLR/MSCC-NASA

Space Segment:

  • on-board software of satellite laser terminals,
  • Software System Specification for Meteosat Third Generation,
  • satellite telemetry replay visualization.

My technical expertise covers standards:

  • ESA ECSS standards, in particular E40 for software engineering, Q80 for software quality
  • ECSS Paket Utilization Standards for ground-space communication

Onboard software function groups, e.g.

  • telecommand processing
  • telemetry collection
  • FDIR (failure detection, isolation & recovery)
  • system state management
  • software upload
  • application specific functionality
  • intra-application communication

Software Engineering Processes & Tools:

  • requirements engineering, using DOORS and other RM tools
  • architecture & design, procedural and object-oriented, using modelling tools, e.g. EA, Paradigm
  • implementation in C (in space rarely also in C++), using all common tool,s like make/cmake, gdb, git, ...
  • network programming, multi-tasking, real-time algorithms
  • real-time operation systems, e.g. VxWorks, FreeRTOS, RTEMS
  • computing platforms: FPGAs, microprocessors, SBCs
  • verification & validation

And as a physicist with a space & astronomy focus there is background knowledge about

  • orbital mechanics, trajectories, dynamics
  • coordinate frames and transformations
  • general spaceflight technology