Design of Low-cost Telecommunications CubeSat-class Spacecraft

2004

The growing pressure in spaceflight to reduce costs together with technological progress results in a trend towards smaller, lighter satellites using commercial off-the-shelf parts where possible. However this process of using lean solutions in the space segment stops halfway if it is not balanced by corresponding smart and flexible concepts in the ground segment. The mean lifetime of small spacecraft is increasing. This means routine operations are an increasing share of ground operations on CORBA as the main inter-process backbone, the authors have developed a concept for integrating additional basic functionality for mission planning and operations support. They have adopted the philosophy of using free governmental off-the-shelf (GOTS) components where available (such as SCOS-2000), adding commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components (with affordable license costs) where suitable and only developing their own solutions when necessary to implement interfaces, to supplement missing components and to provide an integrated user interface. Scope In this article the authors do not describe a final product or achievement, but rather present and discuss a new approach to more flexibility in ground operations.

2012

In terms of time and budget, integration is a significant time-consuming component of spacecraft development. While many useful COTS spacecraft components are available, interfacing and controlling these components in an integrated satellite system remains a complex engineering task. The Stanford/Cal Poly CubeSat and Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Dispenser (PPOD) standards have begun to standardize small satellite mechanical systems and revolutionize the way small satellites are deployed. NASA has recognized this as evident by their Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program which recently selected 17 CubeSats for the ELaNa-4 launch in 2012 (including one high school). To capitalize on this momentum, the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) has organized and supported a team of commercial and academic laboratories to develop and test an over-arching Space Plug-and-play Architecture (SPA) set of standards to support the rapid integration of independently developed satellite modular systems. SPA represents not only an electrical inter-connection and communication scheme, but a complete model for a self-organizing and self-configuring system to support the rapid assembly of mission-specific small satellites. Rather than forcing existing modules to be re-developed to a common messaging standard, SPA utilizes an XTEDS (eXtended Transducer Electronic Data Sheet) model. Each satellite module contains an electronic document describing its interface, capabilities, messages, data formats, etc. By reading a components XTEDS, other systems can quickly integrate and utilize a new module. While designed to initially take advantage of nanosatellites, everything developed can easily scale to larger spacecraft, UAVs or other aerospace and defense systems. This paper discusses our experience in developing the CubeSat Trailblazer, a 1U SPA-only spacecraft -launching in 2012 as a testbed for SPA technology. The mechanisms of self-organization for independent modules as a cooperating communications system are discussed. The simplifications associated with software development of a Command and Data Handler (CDH) is also presented.

Journal of Aeronautics and Space Technologies, 2020

The annually organised Türksat Satellite Model Competition gives undergraduate and graduate students, the opportunity to transform theoretical knowledge into practice and to share interdisciplinary work and experience. Bulent Ecevit University participated in the Türksat Satellite Model Competition 2019 with B-Dispate Black Diamond Space Team. The team consists of undergraduate students with different engineering backgrounds, who are supervised by the academic as well as industry advisors. The main goal of the team is to send the telemetry information (pressure, height, battery state of charge, photograph and video recording, equipment opening, landing location information, attitude information, etc.) collected by the sensor equipments on board to the ground station during the flight stage. Also, the team will have to fulfil particular tasks specified by the competition board. A comprehensive conceptual model satellite synthesis is reported in this paper. The steps in designing the model satellite are presented, allowing significant savings in terms of qualification tests and giving way to a procedure to design and manufacture a low-cost educational microsatellite.

Proceedings of the 29th Minisymposium, 2022

Different arguments were being presented in the last decade about CubeSats and their applications. Some of them address wireless communication (5G and 6G technologies) trying to achieve better characteristics as coverage and connectivity. Some arrived with terms as IoST (Internet of Space Things), Internet of Satellites (IoSat), DSS (Distributed Space Systems), and FSS (Federated Satellite Systems). All of them aim to use Small/NanoSatellites as constellations/swarms is to provide specific services, share unused resources, and evolve the concept of satellites-as-a-service (SaS). This paper aims to emophasize performance attributes of such cyber-physical systems, model their inherent operational constraints and at the very end, evaluate the quality of service in terms of figures of merit for the entering/leaving of new heterogeneous constituent systems, a.k.a satellites, to the constellation. This "whitepaper"-styled work focuses on presenting the definitions of this heterogeneous constellation problem, aims at its main capabilities and constraints, and proposes modeling approaches for this system representation and evaluation.

Small satellites initiatives are increasing substantially since the CubeSat in- vention in 1999 by Jordi Puig-Suari (CalPoly) and Bob Twiggs (Stanford University). The fast development, low cost and use of COTS components allows multiple kinds of missions, from educational tool to space science and technology validation. In Brazil there are multiple projects using Cu- beSats. This paper aims to present the first Brazilian CubeSat Platform, ITA/INPE’s AESP14 Project, and describe its Systems Engineering process. The nanosatellite was used as hands-on activity to ITA Aerospace course Systems Engineering discipline. The systems engineering process used was supported by the Systems Concurrent Engineering Laboratory – LSIS from Integration and Tests Laboratory – LIT/INPE, which the author and co- authors are also members. The undergraduate students were focused on sys- tems engineering activities and documentation to give inputs needed for INPE and ITA graduate students to build and test a low cost national Cu- beSat platform. Results showed that a CubeSat project is feasible to teach systems engineering concepts dividing each life-cycle phase in a semester. Activities developed by ITA undergraduate students have resulted in system and subsystem specifications, which were used to create the first Brazilian CubeSat platform. The CubeSat will be launched in late 2014 through Fal- con-9 launcher.

2016

The Central American Association of Aeronautics and Space (ACAE) and the Costa Rican Institute of Technology (TEC), in partnership with industry and government, have identified the promotion of aerospace as a very promising strategy for economic, scientific, and technological development in Costa Rica. Several studies, including a state-ofthe-art mapping of aerospace industry made by ACAE, the Central American Institute of Business Administration (INCAE) and the Costa Rican Foreign Trade Agency (PROCOMER) [1], have identified actions to enable the development of the aerospace sector in the country. Among them, a significant catalyst would be a practical demonstration of the technical capabilities to develop a space engineering project. The Irazú project is an innovative mission taking place in Costa Rica, which aims to launch the first Central American satellite in orbit by 2018. The project, led by ACAE and TEC, has two main objectives: a) to complete a space project life-cycle, an...

2011 Aerospace Conference, 2011

For a long while, launching satellites for the purpose of research and technology demonstration largely remained with national space agencies and government organizations as the huge funding requirements inhibited the initiation of such projects at university level. It was this idea of providing, at university level, cheap access to space that prompted the design of miniaturized versions of satellites for research purposes. Specifications of cubeSat, a picosatellite, were defined to provide easy access to space for educational and research institutions. The improvement in engineering technologies and miniaturization of physical components has enabled design, development and launch of such small low-cost spacecrafts and to date, more than 60 universities, institutions and research organizations have taken part in cubeSat program since its inception in 1999[1]. Institute of Space Technology (IST) adopted the concept of cubeSat development by initiating the satellite program, ICUBE. ICUBE is the premier student satellite program of any educational institution/university in Pakistan. The first satellite of this program is named ICUBE-1. Successful launch of ICUBE-1 and establishing its communication link with the ground are the primary goals of this mission. The satellite has a passive attitude control system and will carry a CMOS camera for experimental purposes. In this paper, we will discuss in detail the design philosophy of ICUBE-1, followed by the preliminary design and analysis of all its subsystems. The required testing and technical support facilities are discussed before the final conclusions. 12

2017 IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2017

— Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is the formalized application of modeling to support key systems engineering tasks for addressing requirements, design, analysis, validation, and verification. The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) established the MBSE Initiative to promote, advance, and institutionalize the practice of MBSE. As part of this effort, the INCOSE Space Systems Working Group (SSWG) has been investigating the applicability of MBSE for designing CubeSats. Our application of MBSE is enabled by the graphical modeling language Systems Modeling Language (SysML). SysML is used to model all aspects of a system either directly or through interfaces with other models. SysML diagrams are used to describe requirements, structures, behaviors, and parametrics from the system down to the component level. Requirements and design are contained in the model rather than in a series of independent engineering artifacts. The CubeSat Reference Model provides the logical architecture. The logical elements can be reused as a starting point for a mission-specific CubeSat logical architecture, followed by the physical architecture and the CubeSat development. Our prior work established the CubeSat Reference Model domain as consisting of the stakeholders, CubeSat enterprise, external environment, and external constraints, with the CubeSat enterprise consisting of space and ground segments. The CubeSat enterprise architecture has been refined to accommodate an external service providing CubeSat transportation to a launch site, integration into a launch vehicle, launch, and deployment. It has also been refined to accommodate a CubeSat project developing its own ground station or operating with an existing ground station that provides uplink and downlink services. Space and ground subsystems had been identified in our prior work. Use cases have now been established to further define the subsystem capabilities. It has been recognized that there are two modeling efforts. One is the SSWG developing a CubeSat Reference Model with its logical architecture. The other is a team eventually taking the CubeSat Reference Model as a basis for its mission-specific logical and physical architectures. Therefore, there are two categories of stakeholders. A stakeholder is any entity that has an interest in the system. The stakeholders for the CubeSat Reference Model include INCOSE, the Object Management Group (OMG), regulatory agencies, and the university teams that will be using the CubeSat Reference Model. We are exploring having NASA, NOAA, and FCC regulations contained within their own SysML models and connecting those models to our CubeSat Reference Model. The stakeholders for the mission-specific CubeSat model are those with an interest in the mission-specific CubeSat space and ground system. Typical stakeholders for a space and ground system include sponsor, user, operator, project manager, project engineer, developer, and tester. The list of stakeholders for a university CubeSat project is much smaller. We are collaborating with OMGs Space Domain Task Force (SDTF) to adopt the CubeSat Reference Model as an OMG specification.

This paper presents the application of a systems concurrent engineering approach to university CubeSats development. The university CubeSat, object of this paper, is a joint development between the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA). The effort consists in developing a Brazilian CubeSat platform that can be industrialized in Brazil and takes advantage of a Systems Engineering Process approach. This Systems Engineering Process applied on the CubeSat includes mission and life-cycle analysis, requirements engineering, functional analysis, architecture design, and uses an operation life-cycle scenario as an example. The approach is supposed to be applied to every life-cycle process. Thus, System Engineering Process gives a wide range view of the problem, guiding engineers to develop product and organization solutions throughout life-cycle. This approach helps to solve technical and management issues that sometimes are not encompassed with just experienced staff and standard methods.

2011

The Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in collaboration with NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), is developing COSMOS (Comprehensive Open-architecture Space Mission Operations System), a set of software tools and hardware that is designed to primarily support the development and operations of one or more small spacecraft. COSMOS will be particularly suited for organizations with limited development and operations budget, such as universities. COSMOS is a suite of software and hardware tools (including external modules) that enables the operations team to interface with the spacecraft, ground control network, payload and other customers in order to perform the mission operations functions including mission planning and scheduling; contact operations; data management and analysis; simulations (including the operational testbed); ground network control; payload operations; flight dynamics; and system management. COSMOS is being designed to easily b...