Digital Commons Network^™

First Generation Of Project A.S.P.I.R.E. – A 1u Cubesat Mission For Technology Demonstration And Student Involvement In New Zealand, Shuanghui Zhao, Shunxing Shi, Kristen Lian, Rose Peens-Hough, Arami Peens-Hough, Changrui Wang, Joowon Hwang, Jerry Sun, Edward Sun

Small Satellite Conference

MOTIVATION

A feasibility study conducted at an Auckland secondary school in December 2024 found strong interest in satellite-related learning. Following an outreach presentation, 63 students (Majority aged 15 - 18) completed a questionnaire, with an average interest rating of 4.86/5. The most popular subjects were Orbital Physics, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering (fig. 1).

Hitechsat-1: A Rapidly Integrable 3u Platform For University Cubesat Missions, Seho Kim, Miguel Nunes, Mohammed Irfan Rashed, Lance Yoneshige, Gabriel Guerrero, Scott Ginoza, Piper Kline, Luke Flynn

Small Satellite Conference

HITechSat (HTS) is a student-led CubeSat program at the Hawaiʻi Space Flight Laboratory, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. HTS-1 is the first mission in the series: a 3U CubeSat deploying from the International Space Station (ISS) in mid 2027.

Investigation Of A Demonstration Mission For Three-Dimensional Remote Sensing Using “Structured Radio Waves” With Orbital Angular Momentum, Hisatoshi Kimura, Tsukasa Funane, Yosuke Tanabe, Miki Yonehara, Makoto Ito, Keigo Nakamura, Yasuyuki Miyazaki, Satoshi Ikari, Shinichi Nakasuka, Koichi Watanabe

Small Satellite Conference

Background

• As a new radar technology for remote sensing, three-dimensional observation methods using electromagnetic waves with spatial phase distributions are being studied to obtain azimuth-angle information in addition to conventional radar measurements^[1].
• We are considering the use of “structured radio waves”, which are formed by superposing two radio waves carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), as radio waves with spatial phase distributions^[2,3].

Purpose

• Evaluate the effects of satellite position and attitude errors on azimuth-angle estimation and clarify the requirements for a demonstration mission. 
• Assess the feasibility and provide recommendations.

Layer 3 Switching, Todd R. Zatorski

Small Satellite Conference

Poster presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

Mission Orientated Flight Software Development: Cubestep, Tirth Thakkar, Howard Lee, Viren Kumar, Maranda Laws, Shridhi Seth, Marco Maggia, Navid Nakhjiri

Small Satellite Conference

Small satellite teams often develop flight software and mission operations separately, leading to software behaviors that drift out of sync with ground procedures. To fix this, we present a co-design approach that directly links mission goals and operational procedures to the onboard flight software architecture. Demonstrated on the CubeSTEP-Cerberus mission using NASA’s F′ framework and FreeRTOS, our system maps mission intent into five constrained software states (Initialization, Safe, Idle, Experiment, and Transmit) guarded by automated health checks. This co-design strategy ensures the spacecraft acts autonomously to preserve its goals while strictly maintaining operator control over critical decisions.

A Hybrid Architecture For Scalable High-Frequency Inflatable Reflectors For Small Satellites, Aman Chandra, Hina Suzuki, Shashank Verma, Zac Chen, Dustin Blanchard, Christopher Walker

Small Satellite Conference

Space-based telecommunications and remote sensing increasingly demand large-aperture antennas capable of operating at high frequencies, specifically Ka-band and above. While inflatable membrane structures offer the low mass and compact stowage necessary to deploy large reflectors in excess of two meters from small satellite platforms, their adoption has been hindered by the difficulty of maintaining precise surface geometry. To establish a viable pathway for these high-frequency applications, the University of Arizona and Freefall Aerospace have developed a hybrid tensioning and deployment mechanism, validated on a one-meter lenticular reflector. This system decouples boundary tension from internal pressure, using a novel adaptive pre-tensioning …

Planet's Next Generation Evolution Of The High Speed Radio: 10 Gbps Smallsat Radio, David Nemeth, Kiruthika Devaraj, Varun Sharma, Timothy Kordas, Gil Michael, Stefan Turkowski, Abhra Dasgupta

Small Satellite Conference

Planet is a vertically integrated aerospace and data analytics company that operates the world’s largest commercial fleet of remote sensing satellites. Our mission is to image the whole world every day, and make change visible, accessible, and actionable. We have launched over 600 satellites and built up an automated mission control and ground station infrastructure to monitor and control the satellites, and download the imagery data. Planet’s agile aerospace philosophy of rapid prototyping, iteration, and adaptation of the latest commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology has allowed for continuous improvements in data throughputs on our High Speed Downlink radio. Planet’s HSD2 achieves greater …

Modular, Scalable Electroadhesive Technology For Rapid Response Satellite Servicing And De-Orbit, Kalia Crowder, Victor Agüero

Small Satellite Conference

Building on previous surface attachment testing and a study of the Cambrian Works Space Payload for Inertial Despin Efficient Effects (SPIDEE) architecture carried out under AFRL support, this work presents a modular, scalable electroadhesive attachment architecture enabling rapid-response satellite servicing and de-orbit missions. Prior test and analysis campaigns provided quantified performance validation across the small satellite size range, from 3U CubeSats to ESPA-class platforms, demonstrating the scalability required for diverse time-critical servicing scenarios.

Testing validated performance under representative on-orbit conditions and dynamic scenarios. Attachment force measurements across spacecraft materials representing aluminum bus structures, composite panels, multi-layer insulation, and solar cells …

A Survey Of The State Of The Art In Multi-Spacecraft, Multi-Agent Swarms, Caleb Adams, Trey Smith, Aaron Woodard, Ellemieke Van Kints, Brian Kempa, Jeremy Frank

Small Satellite Conference

The Next-Generation Multi-Agent Swarm (NGS) Study conducted by NASA’s Ames Research Center for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) has developed a comprehensive understanding of emerging multi-agent swarm capabilities for applications in cislunar and lunar space. This paper addresses specific shortfalls identified by STMD, including intelligent multi-agent constellations, autonomy, edge computation, position, navigation, and timing for small spacecraft, and small spacecraft propulsion. This paper surveys the current state of the art in technology areas relevant for the next-generation multi-agent swarm design. Our primary focus is on surveying relevant deployed space systems, supplemented with selective analysis of relevant proposed missions and …

Design, Qualification, And Implementation Of Modular Spacecraft Radio Testing Enclosures For Small Satellite Missions, Dexter Stewart

Small Satellite Conference

As small satellite missions evolve, spacecraft platforms increasingly integrate radio-frequency (RF) antennas to support telemetry, command, and inter-satellite communication links that must be verified following full system integration. Recent changes in launch site safety policy, most notably SpaceX’s ban on over-the-air (OTA) testing, have created a critical gap in the ability to qualify spacecraft communication systems during testing at the launch site. This paper presents the design, qualification, and implementation of modular RF containment enclosures, known as ’antenna hats’, developed to enable safe, non-OTA testing of fully integrated small satellites. The antenna hats are self-contained enclosures that interface directly with …

Development, Analysis, And Qualification Of A Hinge And Hdrm Assembly For Small Satellite Deployable Probes, Josh Taylor

Small Satellite Conference

Small satellites commonly utilize deployable systems to expand their space environment sensing and power generation capabilities. Sensing the space environment is required for certain missions, as it provides information about space weather events such as scintillation and solar flares. To accurately measure the space environment, the probes must be placed away from the spacecraft while in orbit. This paper presents the development, analysis, and qualification of a hinge and Hold-Down and Release Mechanism (HDRM) assembly for deployable space weather probes. These two mechanisms were developed as an assembly to be lightweight, compact, and reliable for deploying space weather probes. The …

Framework For Design, Modelling, And Qualification Of Phase Change Material Heat Sinks For Small Satellites, Daniel Kichma

Small Satellite Conference

The increasing use of high-power hardware in small satellites presents a critical thermal management challenge. Phase Change Material (PCM) heat sinks provide passive thermal control for transient heat loads by storing thermal energy as latent heat during melting, maintaining near-constant temperatures. This creates a thermal buffer that lowers peak heat fluxes and reduces the required radiative surface area. A PCM heatsink was required for thermal control of a payload on an upcoming mission at the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL). This motivated the development of in-house PCM capabilities to enable mission-specific designs at lower cost and shorter schedules. This paper presents …

Radma: Resource-Aware, Dynamic Deployment Of Ml Architectures On An Edge Tpu In Space, Robert Rathert

Small Satellite Conference

As the number of Space Vehicles (SVs) orbiting Earth grows, downlink bitrate bottlenecks necessitate a shift to Orbital Edge Computing (OEC). Size, Weight, and Power, and Cost (SWaP-C) limit onboard Machine Learning (ML) autonomy, and State-of-the-Art (SotA) systems deploy static ML models that do not adapt to dynamic orbit conditions. This work proposes and evaluates RADMA, a resource-aware framework that selects Neural Network (NN) models in response to changing latency and energy constraints. We quantify the performance of RADMA on an open-hardware picosatellite payload that hosts a Google Coral Edge Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). Orbit simulation and modeling predict processing …

Citizen Science As A Long-Term Environmental Baseline: Assessing Impacts Of A Small Dam Removal In Montana, Usa, Bethany Blakey, Natalie Bursztyn

Watershed Sciences Student Research

As dam removals increase in frequency across Europe and North America, most research has focused on the impact of larger dam removals, despite the removal of small dams being much more common. There are hundreds of small dams in Montana, USA, and this research investigates impacts on stream ecology and morphology using citizen science data collected over eight years spanning before and after a 2020 small dam removal in Rattlesnake Creek. We analyzed pebble count grain size distributions and aquatic macroinvertebrate biotic indices from 2017 to 2024 to assess changes in sediment transport and macroinvertebrate population as well as evaluate …

Semi-Autonomous Reconnaissance Satellite: A Laboratory Demonstration Of End-To-End On-Board Mission Autonomy, Eran Shtoyerman, Raphael Cohen, Rafi Cohen, Oshri Fatkiev, Guy Zaidman, Gal Pinchas, Doron Shterman

Small Satellite Conference

Real-time satellite responsiveness to user requests from the field remains largely unavailable in current space systems. Such capabilities are typically restricted to low-altitude airborne platforms, primarily due to limited satellite communication bandwidth, intermittent ground contact, and the reliance on ground-based mission planning. Enabling true responsiveness requires a paradigm shift toward highly autonomous satellites, in which target selection, task execution, and mission planning are performed on board.

For example, a user may request a satellite to perform the following task in real-time: detect a ceiling tanker ship in a specified area, estimate its velocity from video data, and autonomously track the …

Development Of The Optical Components For Leo Satellite Communication Equipment, Tomoaki Toriya, Masaki Ogura, Yoshiriho Kamihama, Tomoaki Kiriyama, Katsuhiro Iwasaki, Takashi Kato

Small Satellite Conference

We supply highly reliable optical components such as Optical Isolators, Circulators, and Filters used in optical submarine repeaters. The Faraday rotator, a key device in optical Isolators, is manufactured from crystals, which also enhances the reliability of our products.

Last year we reported that our standard optical isolator YD-460 withstands the LEO satellite environment (radiation exposure, thermal vacuum cycling) and showed no laser-induced degradation up to 4.8 W at 1.48 µm (Raman pump).

In this work, the laser durability was evaluated with a high-power 1.55 µm source (max. 10 W), the wavelength actually used in satellite optical communication. Optical Isolator …

Spot: A Cubesat Mission For High-Resolution Monitorig Of Anthropogenic Sulfur Emissions, Carla Roesch, Colleen Golja, James Custer, Catherine Ember, Jerome Woodwark, Andrew Matheson, Joshua Vande Hey, Sonymol Vk, Steven Heer, Zixuan Gao, Tim Trent

Small Satellite Conference

Resolving individual industrial sources of SO₂ to constrain aerosol forcing — one of the largest remaining uncertainties in Earth's energy budget.

A Stackable Multi-Mppt Power Architecture With Paralleled Inputs For Scalable Cubesat Solar Energy Harvesting, Muhammed Syedali N., Anamika A. Kamath, Nithin Krishnan S. S., Ashfaque K. P., Sijo George, Arun P., Jr-Chiun Roger Tsai, Tensae Ali, Jesmin Jose, Athira B. S.

Small Satellite Conference

In traditional CubeSat configurations, the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) circuit acts as a critical single point of failure because all harvested solar energy is funneled through a single, non-redundant conversion stage. Consequently, the failure of this individual component completely blocks power delivery to the system, permanently stranding otherwise healthy solar arrays and batteries and causing catastrophic mission termination.

This work introduces a modular, stackable solar energy architecture that distributes power conditioning across multiple identical, autonomous modules connected to shared PV and battery buses. By relying purely on analog input-voltage regulation at a common operating point, it eliminates radiation-vulnerable digital …

Advancements In The Ma61c-Smallsat Hardware Board: Elevating Modular Adcs From Trl 5 To Trl 6, Saish Sridharan

Small Satellite Conference

LESSONS LEARNT AND DESIGN JUSTIFICATION

Output from previous phase

• RS422/RS485 Tranceiver: The LCT2865-based interface failed testing and should be redesigned for the next phase.
• Shielded Cabling: Properly grounded shielded cables eliminated JTAG communication instability.

Comparative Analysis Of Reaction Wheels And Control Moment Gyroscopes For High-Capacity Orbital Data Centers In Sun-Pointing Mission Profiles, Chih Ta Wu, Po Hsun Yen, Jen Hao Cheng, Kai Kuo Liao, Shang Jung Lee

Small Satellite Conference

• Orbital data centers (ODCs) are moving from concept to near-term engineering: Starcloud (5 GW), Meta / Overview Energy (1 GW SSP), SpaceX (up to 1M-satellite FCC filing).
• Multi-kW to GW-class compute demands solar arrays of unprecedented scale → extreme inertia and disturbance torques.
• Can Reaction Wheels (RWs) vs Control Moment Gyroscopes (CMGs) hold an ODC in a sun-nadir pointing profile?

Autongc Flight Opnav Experiment Results On Capstone, Andrew J. Liounis, Sun Hur-Diaz, Behnam Azimi, Nichalas L. Cason, Chris R. Gnam, Grant Hecht, Steven Z. Queen, Michael J. Romeo, Sean R. Semper, Nathan Stacey, Andrew Tennenbaum, Daniel G. Berdugo, Carl J. De Vries, Benjamin Leser, Anne Long, Liam A. Greenlee, Joseph W. Patton, Steven B. Slegel, Isaac R. Witte

Small Satellite Conference

Summary: We successfully demonstrated on-board automated optical navigation (OpNav) in a lunar near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) using images of the Moon, the Earth, and other solar system bodies, advancing the technology readiness level (TRL) of the autonomous guidance navigation and control (autoNGC) OpNav capabilities from 5 to 7.

Development Of Spacecraft Digital Twins For Flight Software Maintenance, Robert Klar

Small Satellite Conference

This research project developed a digital twin—a virtual representation of a physical spacecraft, including its components, interfaces, and communications. By leveraging the digital twin’s ability to be replicated, modified, and distributed efficiently, the project enhances capabilities in design, analysis, and optimization. It significantly reduces risk, cost, and development schedules for flight software by minimizing dependencies on hardware resources. The project was executed as a collaborative effort between the Intelligent Systems Division (10) and Space Systems Division (05).

Experimental Leo Cubesat Mission With Pnt And Communication Payloads, Chung-Sheng Lin, Chi-Kuang Chao, Yu-Xiang Lin

Small Satellite Conference

Background: The deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) mega-constellations (e.g., Starlink, OneWeb, Pulsar, IRIS) has driven interest in LEO-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) solutions [1], either through dedicated payloads or signals-of-opportunity.

Objectives: This work proposes a CubeSat mission aimed at verifying integrated LEO communication and positioning capabilities over Taiwan.

Methodology & Mission Plan:

- Constellation: One to four CubeSats will be deployed. Real-time positioning will be tested during simultaneous four-satellite visibility over Taiwan, while recorded-signal positioning will be used for partial constellations.

- Experiments: Dual-mode testing includes concurrent communication and positioning experiments, alongside communication-signal-based …

Swap: An Ai-Enabled Cubesat For Low-Latency Space Weather Alerting, Miles H. Currie, Douglas Franz, Paul Kocyla, Omar Sharaf, Sarvesh Garimella

Small Satellite Conference

1 — Background

• Growing dependence on space-based assets (telecom, transport, grid, GPS) = growing space-weather exposure
• A Carrington-class storm today would mean cascading failures and losses in the trillions
• Current assets (e.g. GOES, ACE, DSCOVR) are excellent but large, costly, and with minutes to hours of alert latency from ground processing; weak coverage off the Earth–Sun line, where multi-point views could untangle the solar flare/SEP/ CME chain
• The Space Weather Alerting Platform (SWAP) concept mission (right) is a low-cost, 3U cubesat solution for proliferated solar monitoring with low-latency onboard AI alerting

Toward Public Access To On-Orbit Propulsion Data From Equuleus: Preparing Real Flight Data For Community Use, Hiroyuki Koizumi, Isamu Moriai, Hokuto Sekine, Keita Nishii, Mariko Akiyama, Shintaro Nakajima, Yosuke Kawabata, Yasuho Ataka, Shunichiro Nomura, Ryota Fuse, Ryu Funase

Small Satellite Conference

EQUULEUS is a 6U lunar exploration CubeSat, jointly developed and operated by the University of Tokyo and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). It was launched in November 2022 by the Space Launch System (SLS) into a lunar transfer orbit and achieved insertion into a trajectory toward the Earth–Moon Lagrange region through multiple lunar flybys using its onboard water resistojet propulsion system AQUARIUS. The EQUULEUS primary mission is the demonstration of trajectory control technology in the Sun-Earth-Moon region for the first time by a nano-spacecraft.

Water-Floating Experimental Validation Of Magnetic Decoupling Strategies For Electromagnetic Formation Flight Using Palm-Sized Satellites, Hideki Yoshikado, Atsushi Noda, Daisuke Wakao, Takuya Koiso, Masaru Ishida, Shogo Saito, Korehito Suzaki, Juichi Takahashi, Yuta Yamaguchi

Small Satellite Conference

Goal: a distributed space antenna built from 10,000+ palm-sized satellites, operating together as a single phased-array antenna for direct-to-device communication from orbit [1, 2].

Electromagnetic Formation Flight (EMFF) generates magnetic forces and torques between satellites by controlling their coil currents, enabling propellant-free control of relative position and attitude [3, 4, 5].

However, every coil interacts with every other coil, so unwanted pairs must be magnetically decoupled. Multi-satellite ground validation is also difficult: air-bearing facilities limit the number of units and the test area [6, 7].

This work presents a water-floating testbed and a ten-satellite experiment comparing two magnetic decoupling strategies.

Lightweight Open Source On-Spacecraft Machine Learning With Mlpack And F Prime, Ryan R. Curtin, Scott M. Gilliland, Sterling L. Peet

Small Satellite Conference

Onboard machine learning is an increasingly important topic in spaceflight systems, as machine learning and AI models are increasingly used for data processing, anomaly detection, attitude control systems, and other predictive applications. However, successfully deploying a machine learning model in a spaceflight computing environment is fraught with difficulty, as spaceflight computing environments are low-resource, but typical machine learning software solutions are implemented in languages like Python, which require an interpreter and other heavyweight dependencies. It is therefore virtually mandatory for any on-spacecraft machine learning to be written with lightweight toolkits that minimize dependencies and resource usage.

We demonstrate a solution …

Payload Operation Using On-Board Vision Language Model, Meirav Nevo, Oshri Fatkiev, Guy Zaidman, Doron Shterman

Small Satellite Conference

The rapid maturation of multimodal vision-language models (VLMs) has significantly expanded artificial intelligence applications at the edge, including spaceborne systems. In this work, we present one of the first demonstrations of deploying a compact vision-language model directly on a very-high-resolution Earth-observation satellite payload processor, enabling autonomous on-orbit scene understanding and near real-time decision-making. This represents a paradigm shift in satellite operations, moving from ground-centric processing toward intelligent, self-directed spacecraft. 

Conventional Earth-observation missions rely on ground-based image processing and interpretation, introducing latency, downlink bandwidth constraints, and limited operational responsiveness. By embedding a VLM on board the satellite, visual reasoning can be …

Hyti-2: Advancing Hyperspectral Thermal Imaging Into The Era Of Space-Based Edge Processing, Miguel Nunes, Yosef Onodera, Trevor Sorensen, Robert Wright, Paul Lucey, Luke Flynn, Eric Pilger, Scott Ginoza, Mark Wood, Lance Yoseshige, Gabriel Guererro, Lucas Anderson, Charles Swenson, Sachidananda Babu

Small Satellite Conference

The Hyperspectral Thermal Imager 2.0 (HyTI-2) is a next-generation long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imaging payload designed to operate as a continuously sensing, onboard intelligent node on a small satellite platform. Building on the heritage of the original HyTI mission, HyTI-2 delivers advances in spectral and spatial performance, onboard processing capability, and operational duty cycle, enabling sustained operational capability to support low-latency, data-rich Earth observation architectures for future satellite constellations. As the primary payload of the NASA ESTO InVEST-funded Active Cooling for Multispectral Earth Sensors (ACMES) mission, HyTI-2 is scheduled to launch in 2027 to a 550 km sun-synchronous orbit. HyTI-2 …

Optimization Of Orbit-Maintenance Strategies For Small Satellites In Cislunar Space, Timothy Lauinger, Bradley Cotten, Robert E. Zee

Small Satellite Conference

Renewed interest in lunar exploration and the development of a sustained cislunar economy has driven demand for low-cost missions supporting mapping, communications networks, navigation services, and scientific studies. Recent growth in rideshare opportunities to the Moon has made small-satellite architectures a viable and cost-effective approach for these missions. Successful execution of these missions, however, depends critically on fuel-efficient and reliable orbital insertion and maintenance strategies, as cislunar missions impose substantially higher delta V requirements than low-Earth orbit missions due to the inherent instability of low lunar orbits. Perturbations arising primarily from lunar mass concentrations drive secular growth in orbital eccentricity …