GNC Engineer, ADCS (Vehicle)
Rendezvous Robotics
<p>Today, everything we send to space is constrained by what fits inside a rocket fairing. That's a fundamental bottleneck to building more capable spacecraft. Rendezvous Robotics is solving this problem with electromagnetic self-assembling tiles: modular spacecraft components that rendezvous, dock, and latch to assemble bigger and more powerful spacecraft than anything that can be folded to fit into a rocket.<br><br>We're a small team based in Golden, Colorado, executing on a clear path from flight demonstration to our first operational systems. Our work spans hardware, software, and systems engineering. We are looking for the best people in the world who want to build the next generation of advanced spacecraft.</p> <h3>GNC Engineer, ADCS (Vehicle)</h3> <p>As a GNC Engineer, ADCS (Vehicle), you will be responsible for the complete lifecycle of the attitude determination and control system of the assembled spacecraft. You will define how a reconfigurable vehicle de-tumbles, points, slews, and manages distributed momentum. You will develop algorithms through analysis and simulation, implement them in the flight software stack, verify them in hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) testbeds, and finally fly it in space! You will optimize performance along every step of the way. This is an opportunity to apply expertise in orbital mechanics, attitude dynamics, momentum management, and controls to architect the control system, drive actuator and sensor requirements and selection, and operate in space. You will collaborate with a small multi-disciplinary team across software, avionics, structures, test, and manufacturing to represent the assembled vehicle at the system level, ultimately defining the scope and requirements for future vehicles. You will also have opportunities to contribute toward relative GNC algorithms that support attitude control of individual tiles during rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking -- reaction-wheel control and desaturation, capture-rate management, and more!</p> <h3>Responsibilities</h3> <ul> <li>Develop highly reliable, performant attitude control and estimation algorithms, simulations, tools, and dashboards in C++ and Python</li> <li>Own attitude determination and control for the assembled spacecraft — de-tumble, pointing, slews, momentum management, and safe mode: design, implement, tune, and verify</li> <li>Develop the momentum-management architecture for the assembled vehicle, including innovative solutions unique to our architecture</li> <li>Model and control attitude dynamics of a large, reconfigurable, and potentially flexible structure whose inertia and center of mass change as tiles dock and reconfigure</li> <li>Lead trade studies and sizing for the ADCS sensor and actuator suite (reaction wheels, magnetorquers, thrusters, star trackers, sun sensors, rate sensors, GNSS)</li> <li>Define vehicle-level GNC requirements, concepts of operations balancing thermal, power, momentum, and communications, and fault management</li> <li>Verify control performance and robustness with 6DOF Monte Carlo and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) experiments</li> <li>Support flight operations, monitor on-orbit health and performance, lead on-orbit anomaly investigations, and drive on-orbit reliability of the attitude control system</li> <li>Secondarily, support development of swarm-side attitude control for the individual tiles during proximity operations</li> </ul> <h3>Qualifications</h3> <ul> <li>Bachelor's degree in aerospace/mechanical/electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or other relevant engineering&nbsp;discipline</li> <li>Software development experience in C++ and Python</li> </ul> <h3>Preferred Qualifications</h3> <ul> <li>Master's or PhD