HOW PLANCK AOCS BEHAVED, COMMISIONING EARLY ORBIT AND

POINTING MANOEUVRES

D. Zorita, A. Agenjo, S. Llorente1, G. Chlewicki, A. Cocito2, P. Rideau3, S. Thuerey, C.

Watson, A. McDonald, M. Mueck, J. de Bruin4
1
SENER Ingeniera y Sistemas, Spain. Demetrio.Zorita@sener.es
2
Thales Alenia Space Italy (Milano)
3
Thales Alenia Space France (Cannes)
4
European Space Agency. ESTEC and ESOC. The Netherlands and Germany

ABSTRACT
After some 10 years of development, Planck was successfully launched on May 2009. The AOCS behaves
perfectly. The SC is seen to keep its attitude within the safe domains properly, to perform the trajectory
manoeuvres with high autonomy, and to point towards the targets with extreme accuracy. This paper presents
commissioning of Planck AOCS, held along 3 months at the European Space Operations Center. It gives the
findings and features encountered.

Figure 1. Planck at commissioning time

INTRODUCTION
Planck is a survey type mission belonging to ESAs Horizon 2000 plan. It is mapping the temperature
anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with unprecedented accuracy. Basically it seeks tiny
asymmetries of Temperature in the celestial sphere, to validate the cosmology theories of the early evolution of
the Universe.

Planck was launched by an Ariane 5, in a dual launch together with ESAs Herschel infrared telescope, to a
Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point in May 2009, as a ESAs scientific programme major
cornerstone.
Planck aims to provide a detailed map of the ancient universe. To accomplish the mission, a two tons S/C,
spinning at 1rpm, was designed. It was injected into the unstable L2 Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system,
1.5 million Km behind the Earth (see Figure 2).

SENER Ingeniera y Sistemas, in Spain, was responsible for the Design, Development, Integration and
Verification of Planck ACMS, and its engineers took a principal role in the commissioning activities.

The three first months of the mission were used for the commissioning of the SC, including its AOCS.
According to the Commissioning Report issued by the Prime Contractor The ACMS proved to function
perfectly. All health checks conducted on the first days were nominal and all equipments behave properly [...].
All large orbit manoeuvres were performed successfully and the spacecraft is now homing in to its final target
attitude around L2. A first transition to SCM was performed successfully on 17 May 2009 and slews with
increasing amplitude were performed successfully up to 19 May 2009. The scan law was also exercised on 20-
21 May 2009, after Manoeuvre 2a, and again after Manoeuvre 3a. It can be seen that the spacecraft is able to
cancel nutation very accurately with a margin of a factor between 30 and 45 w.r.t. requirement."

This basically means that we had no big problems or surprises on Plank AOCS. All operations went smooth and
the autonomy granted by the design soon brought the Operations and Flight Dynamics Teams to its nominal
reduced support time.

Therefore: no anomaly, no paper?. The fact that we did not have to solve brilliantly big issues does not mean
that there is not interesting stuff to be presented to the GNC community. Planck AOCS is a very complex
system, with many new control schemes and a high autonomy on board, and some special features developed
late in the development phase as mitigation for problems encountered.

Instroment
FOV sweep
Ecliptic Pole

Scanning
+/-10 slew example
+/-10

Ecliptic plane
1/da

Instrument
boresight

Figure 2. Planck orbit and scanning law strategy

The paper presents first an overview of Planck AOCS, it then comes to the three main blocks of the
commissioning of the AOCS: the sun acquisition scheme, the deltaV manoeuvres, and the fine pointing slews.
Afterwards, it briefly presents the future work to be carried on on Planck. Finally it gives the findings and
lessons learnt from the project in general and the commissioning phase in particular.

PLANCK AOCS OVERVIEW

Planck is a spinner with three main different AOCS modes: the Sun Acquisiton and Safe scheme, the DeltaV
scheme, and the Accurate Pointing scheme. Each of them follows a complex logic with dedicated sensors and
actuators.

The Sun Acquisition mode uses a coarse three axis Rate Sensor, a Sun Aspect Angle sensor, and hydrazine 20N
thrusters.
The DeltaV mode uses a fine Star Tracker in Time Delay Integration (TDI) mode, and the hydrazine 20N
thrusters.

The Accurate Pointing Scheme uses the fine Star Tracker in Time Delay Integration (TDI) mode, and fine
hydrazine 1N thrusters.

Although the modes share some basic attitude determination modules and indeed interfaces to the platform,
their logic is fully independent.

Figure 3 provides a schematics of the AOCS sensors and actuators. The STR, Star Tracker, is developed by
Selex/Galileo in Firence, Italy. It works in Time Delay Integration mode, transferring charges from one raw to
another during its spinning in the sky, in order to maximize the signal of a star. The FOG is actually not an
AOCS unit, but a Payload flying as technology demonstrator. It is the Astrix 120 built by Astrium Toulouse in
France. The CRS is the Coarse Rate Sensor, built by Laben Thales Alenia Space Milano in Italy. The Sun
Acquisition Sensor SAS is built bt TNO/TPN in The Nehterlands, and so is the Attitude Anomaly Detector. The
1 Newton and 20 Newton hydrazine thrusters are manufactured by Astrium GmbH in Germany.

FO
STR CRS SAS AAD
G
ACMS Data Bus Attitude
Control
Computer
ACMS ACC Discrete I/O
RCS 1N RCS 20 N

Figure 3. Planck AOCS sensors and actuators

SUN ACQUISION
The Sun Acquisition manoeuvre shared the logic with the Safe mode manoeuvre. It would have acquired the
Sun in case separation from the launcher happened outside the bounds for actuation in depointing, nutation or
spin rate.

But this is all that can be said about the Sun acquisition manoeuvre. But separation was perfect. The SC was put
by the last stage of the Ariane close to its nominal spin rate of 1rpm, and some 1deg apart from the Sun, in the
anti-sun pointing direction. The SC remained happily there due to its gyroscopic stiffness.

The Sun Acquisision logic was never triggered, and it was decided afterwards by the commissioning authorities
to leave as is, i.e. not to force a manoeuvre for the sake of commissioning it. It is therefore interesting to point
out that, since we have never gone to Survival Mode, which share the logic with the Sun acquisition mode, we
have never seen this piece of logic working.
This part of LEOP therefore was reduced to check the health status of the sensors. They all survived launch and
were providing full performances.

Figure 4 presents the event of proper Sun pointing within bounds, received at the Mission Operations Centre in
the first visibility period, just after launch.

Figure 4. Sun acquisition event

DELTAV
Soon in the LEOP, a deltaV was needed. Requirements asked to be ready for such a trajectory thrusting
(correction of dispersion from the launcher) only 6h after separation (the earlier the better in terms of fuel
consumption), and therefore the systems were ready. It was the first time the Star Tracker was used, the first
time any thruster was used, and equally important, the first time a complex piece of AOCS logic was exercised.

Orbit Control Mode OCM, the mode in charge of the deltaV, is an amazingly autonomous mode, which takes
the TC with the target deltaV and pointing at exit, and executes it with no need of further instructions. In order
to be able to execute very long manoeuvres, it keeps onboard mass properties bookkeeping, deltaV bookeeping
without accelerometers, feedforward to the thrusters to compensate the torque of the deltaV pulses, attitude
control stopping deltaV and resuming it when back in the appropriate pointing, and complex nutation
minimisation features to control the transversal rates occurring during the pulses).

Figure 5 gives the thruster layout in the Spacecraft. It can be seen that by the appropriate combination of
thrusters, and waiting for the appropriate spin phase, the SC can obtain any deltaV direction in inertial frame.

Figure 5. Thruster layout

The Star Tracker was switched on and it was seen tracking, but the Moon was falling in the Field of View once
per spin period, and the STR was blinded and lost track, reacquiring track several seconds afterwards. The
Control Logic was designed to put itself in a passive Stand By substate during the time the STR lost track, and
since this happens once per spin period, it was too risky to perform the delta under those conditions, and we
waited until the Moon was over.

When the Moon went away, a planet happen to fall into the FoV. It was not making the STR loose track, but just
to incur into some RA; overflow cycles, which it could cope with. Therefore the deltaV was executed. The
manoeuvre was very exciting, since it was the first time that some actuators at all were used. We did a
successful 2h long manoeuvre, and ranging afterwards showed that it was performed very accurately.

Figure 6 shows the evolution of the three components of the DeltaV in inertial frame, as computed by the SC
and read from its telemetry.

Figure 6. First deltaV

Some days later a new deltaV was to be done. This time, it was a 150m/s deltaV, which would take some 50h.
This was a major milestone. The manoeuvre was to be done by a single Telecommand. The autonomy of the
AOCS processes it and, while keeping the attitude, fires the thrusters once per spin cycle with the appropriate
combination of them in the appropriate on-time. This operation may have been a bit frustrating for the Flight
Control Team and the Flight Dynamics Group, since they had no job to do but looking to the screens. For the
designers of the AOCS, the manoeuvre was far more exciting, since they managed to validate in real time the
otherwise polemic autonomy given to Planck orbit control.

Table 1 presents all deltaV manoeuvres done during the commissioning, with the corresponding date, the size of
the deltaV, the Thrust Aspect Angle used (angle of the deltaV direction in inertial frame and the spin vector
direction, which is basically the anti-Sun direction), the hydrazine expended, the duration of the manoeuvre, and
the accuracy of each deltaV, computed after ranging.
 Delva-V TAA Fuel Time Accy.
Manoeuvre Dates
[m/s] [deg] [kg] [h:min] [%]

Man#1a 15/05/09 14.35 49.6 15.61 2:16 1.3

Man#2a 6-7/06/09 155.64 127.9 131.05 44:34 1.6

Man#2b 17/06/09 12.59 127.9 10.13 3:10 6.7

Man#3a 2-3/07/09 58.80 126.9 48.43 13:51 2.3

Table 1. DeltaV in commisioning

POINTING
We had seen we could put the SC were it had to be, but would we be able to make it look where it had to look,
with the stringent pointing performances requested and for the tiny slews scheduled?. Some days after
separation we commissioned the science pointing. It would be the first time that we use the complex pointing
logic, as well as the 1N thrusters, which had several concerns and considerations during the qualifications,
leading to a rework of the repointing strategy very late in time.

The so-called Angular Momentum Control Mode HCM, in charge of reorienting the spin axis of the SC, has
several different paths and dedicated features autonomously selected on board, and which are used to slew
different slew sizes and with different initial conditions of nutation. Its detailed description exceeds the scope of
this paper. It can be said though that the general principle is to reorient the spin axis and cancel the nutation
excited during the spin. Planck does not have passive nutation dampers, and therefore the nutation had to be
cancelled actively. For this, typically three pulses are needed for each slew. It is to be noted that the typical slew
of the sky scanning law is hardly of 2arcmin of size.

Planck had a very important concern on the 1N thrusters used to slew, and specially on the temperature of their
combustion chamber, which we monitored diligently during commissioning. A problem had arose on the 1N
thrusters during the SC qualification phase, since they broke due to microdetonations in the combustion
chamber created by incomplete combustions in thermal regions between catalytic and spontaneous
decomposition of the hydrazine, The thruster supplier made the recommendation not to use the thrusters in
pulses mode, exactly the mode which Planck had been designed for.

A drastic solution was out of reach, due to the advanced SC integration phase. We had then to reinvent our
slewing strategies, making use of existing AOCS logic and HW. Finally we succeeded in developing an
alternative slewing scheme, which coasted some new functions for the control SW, a retune of many On Board
Database parameters, an increase in the competences of the Orbit Control Mode, and some wiring modifications
to avoid Single Point Failures in the thruster thermal control caused by the new strategy. Unfortunately all the
work developed during all those months exceeds the scope of this paper.

During the commissioning, all the pointing strategies implemented in the AOCS were exercised, and the
pointing happened to be far better than required, for the joy of the scientists following the activities. Figure 7
gives some plots for the first slew executed, showing the depointing from the target and the nutation.
 Figure 7. Depointing and nutation in first slew

Table 2 gives the obtained pointing performances, in green, in terms of spin axis orientation and of residual
nutation, compared to the requirement, in orange. It can be seen that Planck is pointing some 5 times better than
required, and it is able to cancel the nutation some 25 times better than required.

Table 2. DeltaV in commisioning

But as soon as we started consuming fuel, and therefore decreasing the pressure in the tanks, we saw that we
were diverging from the optimum performances in a systematic way. The origin of this behavior was not
understood, as many parameters would be involved, from thruster performances at lower pressures to
uncertainty of the position of the SC Centre of Gravity or thruster alignments. It was nevertheless clear that a
calibration process could be done, even if the pointing performances observed were still not violating the
requirements.

We studied deeply the issue by plotting the torque of all the pulses executed so far, with respect to the
theoretical torque commanded (figure 8), and came with a proposal for calibration of some parameters on board,
related to the pulse efficiency function of the thrusters. Basically there were two effects, one proportional to the
pulse length, as a scaling factor, and another one non linear, called fudge factor, related to the impulse bit model
implemented on board. We calibrated the two of them in a success oriented manner, which means that we did
not investigate to full depth the root of the problem, and simply compensate for it by On Board Database tuning,
which showed to solve the issue. This falls again outside the scope of this paper.
 Figure 8. Theoretical pulses vs. executed pulses

PLANCK AOCS IN THE FUTURE

Planck scientist keep o thinking what could be done in the SC to maximize the scientific return, and the come
with fancy ideas on the possibility to put the SC to twice and/or half of its nominal spin rate of 1rpm, or
postprocessig schemes of Star Tracker plus Fiber Optics Gyro attitude determination during the slews, or even a
further deltaV to improve the position of the SC around L2.

LESSONS LEARNT AND CONCLUSIONS

Many problems were faced during all Planck AOCS development, with may headaches and some glories. This
last section outlines the dos and donts learnt in Planck AOCS.

- High AOCS autonomy implemented on board: DO. Although it made the design, development and
verification campaign far more complex, it really meant a very reduced team in the flight dynamics side
for such a type of mission. This means saving a lot of money to ESA.
- STR TDI for spinners: DO. The TDI shows to be an awesome way to accurately compute the attitude in
a spinner, which would not be possible by regular STR modes or with star mappers.
- Complex thrusters modelling on board: DONT. It is not worth. It worked well for the beginning, but it
started degrading with fuel consumption and had to be removed. It is better to leave flexibility for
calibration on ground than to implement on board an a-priori complex model of the detailed behaviour
of hydrazine thrusters.
- Hydrazine thrusters for tiny pulses with high accuracy: DO. In spite of the problem of the risk of
micordetonations, it is to be said that the 1N thrusters behaved perfectly and did their work wonderfully
accurate. But watch out for the pulsed mode and the stresses it may create in the transition zone between
catalytic decomposition and spontaneous combustion of the hydrazine. In addition, be aware that some
pulses (<0.1%) may underperform, because of micro bubbles getting though the combustion chamber.
- The Coarse Rate Sensor (CRS): DO. It is very stable with time, with seen drifts smaller than 1% in one
year in orbit. Nevertheless it is a coarse sensor indeed, and shall not be used for early and very accurate
rate anomaly detection.
- The Sun Acquisition Sensor and the Attitude Anomaly Detector have seen a degradation of the solar
cells with time higher than expected. This can be remarkably seen in the TM. The issue is under
investigation at the unit supplier.
- Complex FDIR logic: DONT. It ends ups creating a lot of effort and headaches. The FDIR shall be
kept as simple as possible. The design board stands any FDIR smart idea, the FDIR implementation
becomes complex but feasible, but the FDIR verification campaign is a nightmare if the FDIR is too
 complex. If there are HW FDIR final checks, as in Planck, the SW FDIR shall be kept simpler than we
did.
- Commonality; ?. This is left open. We had a common AOCS architecture with Herschel, with common
FDIR logic, common operational procedures and contingency recovery procedures, common AOCS
units, common design and AIV teams, etc, but we were two very different SC (actually Herschel was
three axes stabilised and we were a spinner). To some extent the commonality was nice and saved time,
but sometimes it was a pain in the ass.