Spacecraft Technology

Exploration of space is never out of the news for long and the desire to construct lower-cost, reliable and more capable spacecraft has never been greater. At TU Delft years of technology development and research experience in space engineering allow us to offer this course, which examines spacecraft technologies for satellites and launch vehicles. This course provides: - knowledge of the technical principles of rockets and satellite bus subsystems; - the ability to select state-of-the-art, available components; - analysis of the physical and technical limitations of subsystem components; - identification of the key performance parameters of different spacecraft subsystems; - comparison of the values obtained by ideal theory and real-life ones; - opportunity to make preliminary designs for a spacecraft based on its key requirements. Other spacecraft types, such as interplanetary rovers, are not covered in this course. Spacecraft instrumentation and other payloads are also not covered.