The Project Test Bed (PTB) and its application to ESA missions

The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of a Project Test Bed (PTB) and its specific application to support two ESA missions: the technology mission PRoject for On-Board Autonomy (PROBA) and the Land Surface Processes and interactions Mission (Land Mission) during the initial phases of these projects. The PTB is a multi-purpose simulation and verification platform that includes a system simulator an Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE) and Monitoring Control System (EMCS) and real flight hardware, like the on-board computer. This paper describes a prototype version of the PROBA and Land Mission PTB's, where only the system simulator has been implemented This includes an orbit model, rigid body dynamics and simple spacecraft subsystems models, as well as a TM/TC front-end and 2D and 3D visualisation. The PTB has a potential to support the system engineering activities throughout the life cycle of spacecraft development projects and of being reused from one mission to another. The latter has been demonstrated and is presented in the paper.