What type of work for real-life launch vehicles has been done with OTIS4?
OTIS4 is used to support mission integration activities for near term NASA Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) launches: anywhere from early integration activities all the way through day of launch. As an example of an early integration activity: solving flight design issues, due to unusual constraints levied by the Spacecraft customer. Early in 2007 there was such a trajectory problem (in this case: special Spacecraft sun light requirements and Spacecraft telemetry requirements) that the Launch Vehicle (LV) contractor had some difficulties converging to optimal solutions using their own trajectory software. The basic mission design was already difficult and adding these constraints made for a real challenge. Complicating matters was the number of scenarios to be analyzed. OTIS4 readily handled the task and produced optimized trajectory results, in quick turnaround time, that were passed on to the LV contractor and the spacecraft customer. Those solutions were proven to be valid and feasib
