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Full-Text Articles in Aerospace Engineering

Open Prototype For Educational Nanosats Cubesat Structural Design, Benjamin Kading, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh Mar 2015

Open Prototype For Educational Nanosats Cubesat Structural Design, 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 original form factor) has nominal dimensions of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm and a mass of no more than 1.33 kg (however, some integrators are now consistently allowing higher mass levels). Due to their small size and the demonstrated ability to successfully use consumer-grade electronics in low-Earth orbit, CubeSats cost significantly less than larger sized satellites. These reduced costs, however, are still beyond …


Openorbiter Mechanical Design: A New Approach To The Design Of A 1-U Cubesat, Benjamin Kading, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh Jan 2015

Openorbiter Mechanical Design: A New Approach To The Design Of A 1-U Cubesat, Benjamin Kading, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

The OpenOrbiter Small Spacecraft Development Initiative is working to create a set of designs and implementation instructions for a 1-U CubeSat, called the Open Prototype for Educational NanoSats. These designs target a total parts cost of below USD $5,000. This design will be made publically available to facilitate its use by others, with or without modification. A ‘side slotted’ CubeSat design (where main circuit boards are placed in slots between the rails on the outside) has been developed for OpenOrbiter. This paper discusses the design choices that were made during the mechanical structure development of the OpenOrbiter CubeSat design, required …