Our IT infrastructure is also an important aspect of our conceptual design process since we are working in a distributed manner. As the design progresses we are developing spreadsheets for each subsystem. For the generation of our the system level budgets (e.g. mass, power, etc) we are using the
J-CDS Concurrent Design Platform Platform to link together the relevant outputs from our subsystem spreadsheets together
The first step in our design process was to define the overall scope of the conceptual design study. The aim was to define the principal assumptions that will drive the detailed design of the subsystems.
Next the main design options for each subsystem were identified, in preparation for more detailed analysis of the various options.
That's about as far as we've got so far. The next step which is due to kick off this week will be to start the design, looping through the subsystems – starting with the issues that most drive the design - trajectory analysis, propulsion, lander and rover architectures, etc.