- Pointing, Acquisition, and Tracking (PAT)
You own the platform side of acquisition: the strategy and sequence that finds the other terminal, from open-loop pointing off ephemeris through scan-and-stare search, detection, and coarse track, up to handoff to the Lasercom PAT loop for fine steering and beam lock. You define the acquisition timeline and probability budget and prove both in simulation before flight. You may excel here if you've designed acquisition sequences or closed-loop coarse tracking for line-of-sight systems (lasercom, optical crosslinks, seekers, or similar) and can defend an acquisition probability budget.
- Flight Dynamics & Navigation
You own where the platform points and how it gets there: orbit and ephemeris, the body-pointing error budget, and the pointing solution the acquisition sequence runs on. You consume the bus attitude solution and layer the pointing and geometry on top, feeding the PAT concentration's acquisition sequence. You may excel here if you've done orbit/ephemeris, pointing-geometry, and attitude work and can own a body-pointing error budget.
You own the simulation environment the rest of the pointing team designs and validates against: 6-DOF platform dynamics, orbit and relative geometry, sensor and actuator models, the atmospheric channel, the Monte Carlo campaigns that show the link closes across the envelope, and the hardware-in-the-loop path as components arrive. You may excel here if you've built 6-DOF or Monte Carlo simulation frameworks that other engineers design and validate against.
Not sure, or a strong generalist? If you move across GNC rather than living in one discipline, that's a seat too. You'll help tie platform pointing and the modeling environment together and grow into the concentration that fits you best.