Mission lesson
Can you trust what the spacecraft tells you?
Stage 1 of 7
Mission
Who you are, what you are finding out, and what success looks like.
Showing stage 1 of 7: Mission
Mission
A spacecraft cannot see itself. Everything it reports comes from instruments, and instruments are never perfect. Your team will fly the same manoeuvre twice, changing nothing except the quality of the instruments, and find out what that does to what the spacecraft knows about itself.
If the instruments get worse, does the spacecraft get worse - or does it just stop knowing where it is?
- Your role
- Guidance and sensing engineer
- Objective
- Separate simulated truth from estimated state while comparing perfect and realistic instruments.
- Success looks like
- Run both sensor profiles, distinguish truth from estimate, choose evidence, and explain the model's instrument limit.
Learning outcomes · Grades 11–12
What you should be able to do, and the evidence that shows it.
- 01By the end of this mission, the learner will be able to analyse how sensor quality propagates into estimator error without altering the control outcome, and demonstrate this by tracing that path through the evidence.
- 02By the end of this mission, the learner will be able to evaluate the operational risk of a spacecraft whose knowledge of itself degrades while its behaviour does not, and demonstrate this by naming a decision that risk would affect.
- 03By the end of this mission, the learner will be able to formulate a bounded recommendation on instrument selection and state its verification limit, and demonstrate this by naming the physical test that would be required to confirm it.
Preparation
Before we start
A quick check of what you already know. There is no score.
The idea behind the mission
Two runs, one difference: the quality of the instruments. The manoeuvre and the controls are identical, so anything that changes came from the instruments.
Being somewhere and knowing where you are
These are two different things. A spacecraft can be pointing exactly where it should while its instruments insist it is somewhere else. Engineers keep the two apart on purpose: what is true, what was measured, and what the onboard software concluded.
Predict before you run
Before you run anything: if we fit worse instruments, will the spacecraft end up further from its target? Say what you expect and why.
With worse instruments, will the spacecraft end up further from its target? Say what you expect and why.
At least 20 characters — say what you expect and why.
Readiness
This is a local preparation check. It is not Challenge qualification and creates no official attempt.
- Mission objective and success criterion reviewed: not done yet
- Preparation diagnostic answered: not done yet
- Mission theory reviewed: not done yet
- Prediction recorded: not done yet
The set-up you will run
These are the two set-ups you will compare. They are fixed on purpose: if only one thing differs between your runs, anything that changes was caused by it.
Baseline case
Perfect instruments
Candidate case
Realistic instruments
- Write your prediction first.
- Change nothing except the instruments, so anything that moves was caused by them.
- The readings are simulated. No instrument on a real spacecraft was measured here.
Units stay attached to every result: angles in degrees (°), time in seconds (s), power in watts (W), energy in watt-hours (Wh), battery state in percent (%), and elevation in degrees (°) where available.
Finish every preparation item above first; then this can be confirmed.
Official qualification: false. This acknowledgement stays in this browser.
Operate
Readiness required
Complete every preparation requirement, then confirm readiness before operating the Twin.
Fly it with perfect instruments first, then with realistic ones. Nothing else changes.
Baseline
Perfect instruments
Candidate
Realistic instruments
Run the baseline first so you have something to compare against.
- Perfect instruments: not run in this session yet
- Realistic instruments: not run in this session yet
Evidence
Run a Digital Twin case first
The results fill in once the Twin has produced evidence. The decision, limits and knowledge check can be read now.
Read the evidence
Look at the two lines. One is where the spacecraft really was. The other is how wrong its own estimate was. Compare them across both runs.
Run the Twin to produce evidence.
Complete
Readiness required
Finish the required run or comparison, select evidence, make a decision and answer the knowledge check. Then reflect here and finalize.
Completion records the work you did; it does not mean mastery, qualification, or an official grade.
Reflect
Why can a spacecraft be on target while its estimate is wrong, and what additional validation would build confidence?
At least 20 characters. Editing this or any source work after completion invalidates the local record.
Your formative result
Revisit the mission evidence
Formative · not an official grade
No formative evidence has been recorded yet.
Formative band: revisit. Any formative band may complete the mission. Official grade: none.
Finish the required run or comparison, select evidence, make a decision, answer the formative assessment, and complete your reflection.
Recognition
Lane C provides a private local-practice record. Verified recognition remains a separate Platform workflow.
Complete the mission first
Finalize the mission to create a local-practice record on this device.
Finalize the mission to create a local-practice record on this device.
Home mission
Home mission: the wrong clock
Think of a clock that runs five minutes fast. Write down what is actually true, what the clock says, and what someone reading the clock would believe. Then write one sentence about which of those three a spacecraft engineer would most want to check.