• satellite
• electric propulsion
• space systems
• mission analysis

This thesis aims to design the power and communication subsystems of D3SAT (Drag make up and de-orbiting demonstration satellite) mission.This mission aims to demonstrate SITAEL's Hall-Effect thruster HT-100D in-orbit by mounting it on a microsatellite which has a mass less than 40 kilograms. This thesis deals with the analysis of orbital operations required for performance evaluation,namely drag compensation and end-of-life de-orbiting. Starting from the power requirements of D3SAT in different modes of mission, several scenarios of drag compensation and de-orbiting are analysed in order to minimize the solar array area,mass and de-orbiting time. An accurate thermal model of the solar cell has been developed to calculate the maximum power generation as function of the temperature in space. In the communication subsystem,house keeping data budgets are created and link budget analysis is performed by defining different RF transmission losses and exploiting UHF/VHF/S-band cases. Both of sub-systems are found to be compliant with the stringent volume, mass and power requirements on-board small satellites. The HT-100D is found to efficiently satisfy the mission requirements with very low power requirements and low propellant consumption, thereby proving to be an ideal candidate to enhance the capabilities of small satellites.