THE GOCE SYSTEM END TO END SIMULATOR

摘要

This paper presents the current status and the performance of the GOCE (Gravity and Ocean Circulation Explorer) System End to End Simulator in support to the system design and verification activities as well as for assessing the satellite system performance. After an introduction dedicated to the description of the simulator architecture and its modular decomposition into individual models, the use of the simulator is presented in connection with the various phase of the project life cycle. In particular, the GOCE System simulator is being used for: · checking the consistency of spacecraft and payload specifications with the system requirements · supporting trade-off, sensitivity and worst-case analyses · supporting design and pre-validation testing of the DFAC control laws · preparing and testing the on-ground and in-flight calibration concepts · prototyping the post-processing algorithms, transforming the scientific data from Level 0 (raw telemetry format) to Level 1B (I.e. geolocated gravity gradient tensor in different reference frames and fully calibrated and corrected GPS observations).