Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Cubesat Deployable Solar Panel System, Thomas Mcguire, Skye Leake, Michael Parsons, Michael Hirsch, Benjamin Kading, Jeremy Straub, David Whalen

Jeremy Straub

CubeSats are small spacecraft with a nominal size of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm and a mass of 1.33 kg [1] (though some launch providers are now supporting expanded mass levels). While the CubeSat form factor has re-duced the time and cost of spacecraft development, the required resources are still beyond the grasp of many colleges and universities. The Open Prototype for Educational Nanosats (OPEN) aims to solve this problem. OPEN is an inexpen-sive modular CubeSat that can be produced with a parts budget of less than $5,000 [2]. The OpenOrbiter pro-gram is working to develop this …

Design Of A 1-U Cubesat Structure For The Open Prototype For Educational Nanosats, Benjamin Kading, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

CubeSats are a class of small satellites that have recently gained significant interest and are being developed and used for engineering test missions, bona fide research and various other applications. A 1-U CubeSat (the orig-inal form factor) has nominal dimensions of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm and a mass of no more than 1.33 kg [1](however, some integrators are now consistently allow-ing higher mass levels). Due to their small size and the demonstrated ability to successfully use consumer-grade electronics in low-Earth orbit, CubeSats cost sig-nificantly less than larger sized satellites [2]. These re-duced costs, however, are still …

The Use Of Additive Manufacturing For Cubesat Design And Testing, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh, Scott Kerlin

Jeremy Straub

In developing a small spacecraft, the integration of numerous systems in a small area is a key challenge. It is easy to overlook how various component parts will integrate or have multiple sub-groups utilize un-filled space without realizing that they are creating a resource conflict. Additionally, the manufacturability of the final design is a key consideration. For all of these reasons, developing low-cost and incremental prototypes is a engineering ‘best practice’ for small spacecraft development.

Work To-Date On Mechanical Design For An Open Hardware Spacecraft, Jacob Brewer, Brian Badders, Josh Berk, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

The OpenOrbiter CubeSat seeks to demonstrate the designs created for the Open Prototype for Educational NanoSats (OPEN) initiative. OPEN provides a set of freely available design documents that can be utilized by educational and research teams worldwide. The OPEN structure implements a different strategy than most other CubeSats, allowing it to maximize the use of the overhang space (an area of space between the supports for the frame rails and the wall in the PPOD deployer). It also provides a location for payload components or a propellant tank at the spacecraft’s center of mass. This design is enabled by a …

Stemsat: An Iss Cubesat Program Based On Spare Parts, Anders Nervold, Josh Berk, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

With the national government’s focus on driving STEM-education, it is important to provide hands-on ave-nues where students can engage with, and accumulate ex-perience working directly with projects within their fields of interest. The Student Technology Emersion Satellite (STEMSat), provides an avenue for students to become in-volved in CubeSat design and development with only mi-nor hardware and monetary resources, and without being dependent on a launch.

STEMSats are CubeSat satellites that are created from spare parts, residual tools and equipment, obsolete mate-rials, and other types of trash aboard the ISS. A list of all the excess items available for such a …

The Open Prototype For Educational Nanosats: Fixing The Other Side Of The Small Satellite Cost Equation, Josh Berk, Jeremy Straub, David Whalen

Jeremy Straub

Government supported nano-satellite launch programs and emerging commercial small satellite launch services are reducing the cost of access to space for educational and other CubeSat projects. The cost and complexity of designing and building these satellites remains a vexing complication for many would be CubeSat aspirants. The Open Prototype for Educational NanoSats (OPEN), a proposed nano-satellite development platform, is described in this paper. OPEN endeavors to reduce the costs and risks associated with educational, government and commercial nano-satellite development. OPEN provides free and publicly available plans for building, testing and operating a versatile, low-cost satellite, based on the standardized CubeSat …