CubeSat has become a satellite concept with increasing interest for space research and exploration. Key elements of its success have been standardization, easy design and low cost. However, the constraints of space, weight and power represents practical limitations for the scientific instrumentation that can be accommodated limiting the scientific scope that the CubeSat concept can have....
Investigating the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides us with the opportunity to study the formation of the early universe, in particular it reveals the effect of gravitational waves caused by inflation after the Big Bang. Experiments studying the CMB polarisation use ground and balloon-based polarimeters operating in the millimetre wave range, and these require both...
The idea of simplifying space missions by using CubeSats and CanSats appeared around 20 years ago with the main purpose of making space technologies accessible to a broad audience. Both platforms proved to be a game changer in the space sector up to the point nowadays that anyone can start developing space related missions from home.
The CanSat platform has been used as the perfect...
It is not new that satellite design, component procuration, integration, testing, launch and operation are cost and time demanding. However, during the last decade, the small-satellite concept re-emerged not only as an enabler of smaller and lightweight platforms, but also as a new aerospace paradigm based in a) the adoption of up-to-date consumer technologies, b) rapid development cycles and...
Libre Space Foundation is designing an open-source hardware and software family of
PocketQube format satellite modules. We are focusing on the main module including typical
OBC and COMMS functionality delivered using modern and high capable MCUs (STM32) and
reconfigurable COMMS ICs (AX5043). Data logging and power management functions are also
present. We are following the mechanical...
An overview of the SatNOGS project, a network of satellite ground stations around the world, optimized for modularity, built from readily available and affordable tools and resources.
The trend of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite launches continues and new countries and players join the space journey. SatNOGS provides a scalable and modular platform to track, receive telemetry, monitor and...
TU Darmstadt Space Technology e. V. is a group of students at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Its purpose is to get students in contact with space technology. To give students the opportunity to get first hands on experience in practical projects, there are currently a CubeSat and experimental rockets in development. Because also others should benefit from this work, all the CubeSat...
The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) started in the academic year 2009/10 educational innovation activities in space engineering. The implementation of several topics in the Conceive - Design - Implement – Operate (CDIO) syllabus was pursued, mainly focused on the next topics: Hardware and software integration, Test, Verification, Validation and Certification.
With this objective the...
In situ space weather measurements are currently sparse; this represents an obstacle to further improving our understanding of the Sun-Earth interaction. Constellation missions are ideal as they enable a comprehensive and broader set of magnetic field data at many points simultaneously. A novel approach is to exploit CubeSat platforms, however, on them, mass and power resources are...
The “BUHOSAT”, which adopts its name from the university mascot, is a unique 1U CubSat with an astronomical mission to detect synchrotron radiation. The team composed of scientists and engineers designed a 1U CubeSat capable of carrying this novel mission. The BUHOSAT is the perfect example of the use of current enabling technologies for nano-satellites, commercial of the shelf (COTS) plus...
Copenhagen Suborbitals is a crowd-funded, non-profit, amateur space programme with the goal of sending one of us into space, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, using our home built space capsule and rocket. Since the beginning of 2008, we have flown five rockets, two mock-up space capsules, and reached significant milestones like building bi-liquid rocket engines, active guidance and establishing a...
Team Anant is a research oriented project by an undergraduate team of BITS, Pilani to create India's first hyperspectral imaging nanosatellite. Started in 2013, the project is currently in the Proposal Design Review (PDR) stage being conducted by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
This paper will discuss the essential role of open source in the development of this satellite and...
I can share my experience about starting hands-on based space education in engineering education. I have been promoting space education in Nepal, where there was not any project on space. I founded my company called ORION Space to promote space education, and initiate space related project in Nepal. I started with CanSat Project, which is Project Based Learning method to teach about space and...
The practical results presented in this talk were gained with a range of Open Source Software (OSS) solutions. The most important employed OSS is "bowerick" [1], which is a Message-oriented Middleware (MoM) wrapper around Apache ActiveMQ [2] and various supporting libraries such as Eclipse Jetty [3] and Spring Messaging/Websocket [4] for WebSocket-based [5] transport or Eclipse Paho [6] for...
Phase 4 Ground is a project devoted to bringing an open source implementation of DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X to amateur radio terrestrial and space deployments. Any payload that complies with the air interface of 4-ary MSK FDMA up and DVB-S2/X+GSE TDM down will be able to take full advantage of a modern efficient open-source communications system. Phase 4 Ground is under active development and welcomes...
Designing a nanosatellite requires close interrelation between different fields,
with respectively strong level of expertise, all the more so as development progresses. During cubesats preliminary design many budgets are essential (mass, power, link, data, dissipation). Their local inputs, outputs and models are often intertwined. For instance, power budget rely on payload requirement,...
Nowadays, even though software has a fundamental role in scientific research, the wide majority of scientists is primarily self-taught and received no formal training in software engineering, with often leads to quality and reproducibility problems[1]. The space industry is in a similar situation, with many incident reports describing “various aspects of complacency and a discounting or...
SPICE is an information system the purpose of which is to provide scientists and engineers the observation geometry needed to plan scientific observations and to analyse the data returned from those observations. SPICE is comprised of a suite of data files, usually called kernels, and software -mostly subroutines-. A customer incorporates a few of the subroutines into his/her own program that...
General Objectives
Encourage the regional development of space applications for social-economic purposes based
on CubeSat technology.
Specific Objectives
To foster the approach between the academic field and the aerospace environment, particularly
to undergraduate students. To conceptualize, design, produce, test and start a set of CubeSats
with academic purposes making use of...
HyperSat MINI (HSN) project was set up with an intention to develop a new satellite platform which would facilitate space mission preparation and implementation in shortest time possible. Satellites will be offered in a modular format – the smallest module size being 35x35x10 cm and having a mass of up to 10 kg. The structure will be scaled up to the limit size of 35x35x60 cm and the mass of...
The Laboratory for Space Research (LSR) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is an interdisciplinary unit within the Faculty of Science, established in January 2016 and currently comprising approximately 25 members spread out over the Departments of Physics and Earth Sciences focusing on a broad range of research programs in high energy astrophysics, planetary science (including remote...
HyperSat is a new, modular microsatellite platform for space missions to be realized in a short time and at a low cost. It can support missions of a single satellite or constellation of spacecrafts. Currently, the HyperSat platform is under development. One of its crucial components is Thermal Control Subsystem.
In the space vacuum environment convection does not take place. Hence, the...
Open Source is still a relatively new term for many academics. They often do not know of open source works that are as useful as more widely used proprietary products. Reasons for this include lesser awareness of open source and its advantages, difficulty in migrating from existing proprietary systems, and sometimes, lack of documentation.
The first section of the paper will introduce the...
Abstract
During 2018 a student CubeSat project was developed at George Washington University (GWU) for the first time. The small satellite mission implemented a software stack with the hope of creating a simple and lightweight framework for future academic CubeSats. The developed flight software consisted of a collection of fundamental services and an application layer, which was executed...
A cubesat is a very small, low cost, artificial satellite designed for space research purposes, very popular in the academic community. Cubesats are normally deployed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which can be defined as orbits up to 1000 km above the earth surface, with an orbital period of approximately 90 minutes at a speed of 7.8km/s. However, a big consequence of this, is that a particular...
Python is not only one of the most important programming languages in the software industry[1][2], but also shows the most solid growth among the widely used ones thanks to its popularity in the Data Science field[3][4]. Python gained lots of traction in the scientific computing field in the 90s and the 2000s thanks to its simplicity and its power as a “glue language”, allowing scientists to...
Built upon the successful expertise of LISA Pathfinder, the 3Cat series cubesats (from UPC NanoSat Lab), Solar Orbiter and Gaia, the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) is designing and implementing a high-performance multipurpose platform for cubesats that can be adapted to different commercial and scientific uses. It provides a robust on-board computer with redundancy to control...
ISTsat-1 is a CubeSat currently under development by students and faculty from Instituto Superior Te ́cnico (IST) along with amateur radio experts from AMRAD. As with any spacecraft, it will need to be monitored, controlled and results from scientific experiments have to be retrieved. How these tasks are communicated between the ground and the spacecraft is the domain of the ISTsat-1 Control...
Additive manufacturing is changing the way of designing structural parts. It offers the following benefits: design for need instead of design for manufacture paradigm, fast prototyping, reduced environmental impact, process optimization, mass reduction and applicability to new materials, among others.
In the space sector mass reduction is a major challenge. Structural components require the...
SPICE is an information system the purpose of which is to provide scientists and engineers the observation geometry needed to plan scientific observations and to analyse the data returned from those observations.
The ESA SPICE Service and NAIF provide a suite of tools that using SPICE data provide ready-to-go functionalities that have proven to be operational for Planetary Missons. Some...
Libre Space Foundation is cooperating with European Space Agency to exploit the advantages of Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology in space applications under the program codenamed “SDR Makerspace”.
The goal of “SDR Makerspace” is to perform research and experiments with SDR software and hardware that will provide insights about the advantages or possible limitations of the technology...
The number of cubesats and small satellites sent to orbit is rapidly growing. Not only that, but the market trends toward the launch constellations of hundreds of satellites in LEO. This situation will become very challenging in terms of operations and data management for all the New Space companies. In order to overcome these problems, we need to increase the level of autonomy of satellites...
VIGIL is a small radar in lunar orbit to track debris from deep space launches. There have been dozens of rocket stages in lunar-crossing high Earth orbit. There is a possibility that some have been captured in lunar orbit by 3-body effects. With increased travel to the Moon, unexpected objects in lunar orbit pose a risk. Since these objects are not large, and specular flashes may be...
