Training Portal Development for Satellite Behavior Simulation

Satellite operation requires precise actions and ongoing control. Proper training ensures that the staff has necessary skills and knowledge for smooth and reliable operation. However, traditionally, such training poses a dilemma for an organization: training importance goes together with immense expenses and risks entailed in a live satellite manipulation.

Our Customer is a government aerospace organization that requested training portal development to create an interactive platform that would enable trainees to acquire the essential satellite operation skills. By building a simulator accessible via an online education portal, the Customer aimed at eliminating multiple risks and costs of manipulating a live satellite. The platform had to simulate real spacecraft behavior throughout all the stages of the satellite lifecycle. Among multiple software development companies, the Customer selected Iflexion because of our strong background in e-learning solutions and web portal development.

Functionality

The solution is integrated with the operators’ automated worksites, which ensures a seamless simulation of real-life events, providing an authentic experience of satellite control. The solution provides different functionality for trainers, trainees, and administrators.

• Trainees can access the assigned courses and pending tasks. They can view and download any relevant course materials. After submitting their assignments, they can study the satellite’s behavior in response to received instructions. If trainees succeed, they get a special certificate stating that they have completed their training.
• Administrators can adjust the database and the system and prepare new training cycles based on the system’s new settings.
• Trainers have both creative and supervisory capabilities. They can create new courses and assign them to trainees. Apart from that, they can manage the supporting content, upload, change and delete training materials. While the course is in progress, they can monitor each trainee's activity in real time. This gives the trainer the ability to manage trainees’ progress and assign additional training sessions if required. 

Training Web Portal

The portal offers an on-demand training model, thus enabling trainees to connect and take a course from any location with the internet access, which provides a positive user experience. Owing to the platform, the Customer managed to decrease the overall training time while providing both trainers and trainees with the opportunity to choose the optimal time to interact with the learning application. This way, satellite operators are able to take up the simulation at a pace corresponding to their abilities.

Front-end

System administrators grant trainees with the secure on-site and remote portal access. Trainees use the portal to keep their training materials and check their training status, pending assignments, and grades. When trainers assign new tasks and upload new materials, trainees get relevant notifications on the portal. While taking a training, trainees can share their screens remotely with trainers, so that the latter have real-time control over a student's performance and can respond immediately if required.

As for trainers, they keep track of trainees’ advancement and administer it remotely. The solution provides them with a comprehensive set of tools ensuring a smooth educational workflow.

System Administration

As the solution required substantial administration effort, Iflexion developed several variants of the desktop client to ensure the system’s ongoing support. The desktop clients allow administrators to manage the system and the database securely, tweak the web portal when necessary, and manage the user database.

Simulating Satellite Behavior

Behavioral simulation is crucial to ensure a proper understanding of satellites’ response to specific user actions and, respectively, to guarantee trainees’ smooth transition to live operation once they complete the training. With this in mind, Iflexion’s team used innovative technology for object modeling and data visualization to reproduce authentic spacecraft behavior and reactions at every operational phase. Thus, while performing certain types of tasks, trainees carry out necessary calculations and build behavioral models of their satellite. During this costless and risk-free simulation, the platform obtains and processes all the parameters submitted by the student and responds exactly as a live satellite would respond in a real-world situation. 

The solution allowed the Customer to reduce training costs along with improving the training process efficiency. The solution also helped the organization to improve the overall training quality owing to the enhanced training control and wide administration capabilities. The platform supports a seamless and intuitive educational workflow and represents a unique training product that prepares skilled satellite operators. The solution not only provides an authentic experience of a satellite management but also helps the Customer to minimize risks and cut costs related to satellite manipulation in real life.