On February 2nd, 2019 the PDR of SOURCE took place at the Institute for Space Systems of the University of Stuttgart (IRS).
The aim of the day was to conclude project phase B, in which the preliminary design of the satellite had been developed. In addition to a project milestone for SOURCE, the review represented an examination performance at the end of the semester for all participants of the corresponding lecture.
Besides the reviewers, who came from Tesat-Spacecom, Thales Alenia Space and Airbus as well as from DLR Bremen and Baylor University, the SOURCE team also welcomed numerous guests. Among them were not only members of the IRS institute and employees of the SOURCE project partner IRAS, but also students of the friendly student society TU Darmstadt Space Technology e.V. (TUDSat). This way, the SOURCE PDR had more than 70 participants in total.
The review began at 10:00 a.m. with the presentation of all subsystems, the system engineers and the team lead. Within about two hours, the current status of the entire satellite system was presented. In the following break the team already got many positive remarks about the endurance and motivation with which the students are working on SOURCE. In the afternoon, reviewers and guests had time to ask questions and make comments.
Following the review, the supervising university teacher Professor Sabine Klinkner was very satisfied with the professional conduct of the review, "I was particularly pleased with how confidently the students answered the experts' questions. They really impressed the space professionals".
Despite the rather cool weather and the onset of darkness, the SOURCE team let the evening end on the roof of the institute, while the Review Board discussed the outcome of the review.
In the end, the Review Board agreed on recommending to continue with Phase C once all RIDs (Review Item Discrepancies) had been processed. The result of the review is thus, as in Phase A, a conditional pass, so the next goal is to close all the RIDs by the beginning of the next semester in order to start phase C in time.
The SOURCE team would like to thank all guests and especially the reviewers for their interest and commitment in making the PDR of SOURCE possible.