Digital Commons Network^™

Helioswarm: The Swarm Is The Observatory, Butler Hine, Brittany Wickizer

Small Satellite Conference

The HelioSwarm Mission will transform our understanding of space plasma turbulence by being the first-of-its-kind simultaneous, multiscale observatory comprising multiple spacecraft. HelioSwarm was competitively selected under the Heliophysics Explorers Program 2019 Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX) Announcement of Opportunity. The central powered-ESPA Hub spacecraft is co-orbited by eight SmallSat Node spacecraft, together moving through a High Earth Orbit to obtain data in various solar wind regimes. The mission architecture is that of hub-and-spoke, with the larger hub serving as a communications relay between the Nodes and DSN. Mission operations, management, and technical oversight are provided by NASA Ames Research Center; the spacecraft …

Over-The-Vacuum Update – Starlink’S Approach For Reliably Upgrading Software On Thousands Of Satellites, Akash Badshah, Natalie Morris, Matthew Monson

Small Satellite Conference

Starlink operates the world's largest constellation of over 4000 satellites, all of which receive regular software updates to deliver new capabilities, improve reliability and performance, and maintain security. Updating the software across the constellation requires solving two core challenges: safely updating an individual satellite in the harsh environment of space, and orchestrating thousands of updates without impacting users of the system.

Variations on these problems have been addressed for large scale terrestrial compute systems by the broader software industry, and we have leveraged practices of that state of the art to develop a novel spacecraft software update system that delivers …

Capstone: A Summary Of A Highly Successful Mission In The Cislunar Environment, Tom Gardner, Brad Cheetham, Jeff Parker, Alec Forsman, Ethan Kayser, Michael Thompson, Conner Ott, Lauren Demoudt, Michael Caudill, Matt Bolliger, Arlen Kam, Keith Thompson, Rebecca Rogers, Hannah Umansky, Brennan Bryant, Tomas Svitek

Small Satellite Conference

NASA, Advanced Space, Terran Orbital, Rocket Lab, Stellar Exploration, JPL, the Space Dynamics Lab, and Tethers Unlimited have partnered to successfully develop, launch, and operate the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission, which is serving as a pathfinder for Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NHRO) operations around the Moon. This low-cost, high-value mission has demonstrated an efficient, low-energy orbital transfer to the Moon and a successful insertion into the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), the intended orbit for NASA's Gateway lunar orbital platform. The mission is now demonstrating operations within the NRHO that ultimately will serve …

Operations And Results From The 200 Gbps Tbird Laser Communication Mission, Kathleen Riesing, Curt Schieler, Bryan Bilyeu, Jesse Chang, Ajay Garg, Noah Gilbert, Andrew Horvath, Robert Reeve, Bryan Robinson, Jade Wang, Sabino Piazzolla, Abdullaah Tarif, Beth Keer

Small Satellite Conference

Since launch in May 2022, the TeraByte Infrared Delivery (TBIRD) mission has successfully demonstrated 200 Gbps laser communications from a 6U CubeSat and has transferred up to 4.8 terabytes (TB) in a pass from low Earth orbit to ground. To our knowledge, this is the fastest downlink ever achieved from space. To support the narrow downlink beam required for high rate communications, the payload provides pointing feedback to the host spacecraft to precisely track the ground station throughout the 5-minute pass. The space and ground terminals utilize fiber-coupled coherent transceivers in conjunction with an automatic repeat request (ARQ) system to …

Biosentinel: Mission Summary And Lessons Learned From The First Deep Space Biology Cubesat Mission, Matthew Napoli, Cheryle Kong, Jeffrey Homan, Jesse Fusco, Robert Nakamura, Mike Padgen, Shang Wu, Philip Shih, Mohammad Hejase, Sergio R. Santa Maria, Josh Benton, Dennis Heher, Terry Stevenson, Andres Dono Perez, Jose Alvarellos

Small Satellite Conference

Launched on Artemis I, BioSentinel carries a biology experiment into deep space for the first time in 50 years. A 6U CubeSat form factor was utilized for the spacecraft, which included technologies newly developed or adapted for operations beyond Earth orbit. The spacecraft carries onboard budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as an analog to human cells to test the biological response to deep space radiation. This was the maiden deep-space voyage for many of the subsystems, and the first time to evaluate their performance in flight operation.

Flying a CubeSat beyond LEO comes with unique challenges with respect to trajectory …

The First-Ever Asteroid Fly-By Performed By A Cubesat: Outcomes Of The Liciacube Mission, Eugenio Scarpa, Niccolò Battezzati, Sarah Ciaglia, Pasquale Tricarico, Biagio Cotugno, Emilio Fazzoletto, Gabriele Impresario

Small Satellite Conference

Transported onboard NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (in short, DART) spacecraft developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (in short, LICIACube) played a crucial role in the homonymous mission that took place in September 2022. Its main purpose has been to document the effects of the intentional impact of DART probe with Dimorphos, the minor-planet moon of the 65803 Didymos asteroid system. Along this first-ever planetary defense mission against Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), LICIACube successfully completed the first-ever asteroid fly-by performed by a CubeSat.

With a maximum Earth …

Thermal And Radiation Design Considerations For Cubesats In Low Lunar Orbit, Bruno Mattos, Lucas Anderson, Randy Jost, Charles Swenson, Denis Vieira, Renan Menezes

Small Satellite Conference

NASA's Artemis program is turning the attention back to the Moon. As an example of Artemis I, CubeSats can now be inserted into lunar orbits by ridesharing. Designers must become familiarized with the additional technical challenges of operating far away from the usual low Earth orbit (LEO) condition, especially regarding the lunar radiation and thermal environments. This paper analyzes the thermal environment loads for a spacecraft operating in a low lunar orbit (LLO) at 100km altitude with a fixed nadir-pointing orientation. A simplified thermal model is presented to assess the impact of the surfaces' thermal-optical properties and internal thermal resistances …

Lessons Learned From Operations Planning And Preparation For Equuleus Launched Toward The Moon By Sls Artemis-1, Shintaro Nakajima, Yosuke Kawabata, Ryota Fuse, Ryu Funase

Small Satellite Conference

EQUULEUS (EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U Spacecraft) will be the world's smallest spacecraft to explore around the Earth–Moon Lagrange point, which was launched on November 16, 2022, by NASA's SLS (Space Launch System) Artemis-1. The primary mission of spacecraft is a trajectory control experiment, and its objective is to develop and demonstrate trajectory control techniques within the Sun-Earth-Moon region by flying to a libration orbit around the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L2 (EML2) along a low-energy transfer. EQUULEUS must perform a maneuver before the lunar flyby to stay within the Sun-Earth-Moon region. To perform DV1, we need to calculate and optimize the …

Windform® Xt 2.0 Use As 3u Cubesat Primary Structure, Amanda Stark, Andrew Paddock, Thuan Nguyen, Kurt Woodham

Small Satellite Conference

CubeSats provide a platform for small-scale space research and technology demonstration at reduced complexity, cost, and development time. These advantages drove the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) to develop and launch the GPX2 3U CubeSat to explore the viability of using Commerical Off-The-Shelf (COTS) differential Global Position System (dGPS) in low earth orbit. To reduce manufacturing costs and increase design flexibility, the project chose additive manufactured Windform® XT 2.0 as the primary bus material rather than traditional subtractive manufactured (milled) metal. The bus is a two-part, Selective Laser Sintered, 3D-print structure consisting of a single-piece, five-walled chassis and single-walled cover. …

The Lightsail 2 Solar Sailing Mission Summary, David A. Spencer, John M. Bellardo, Bruce Betts, Justin Mansell, Barbara Plante

Small Satellite Conference

The LightSail 2 mission concluded a 3-year mission in November 2022, having successfully demonstrated controlled solar sailing in low-Earth orbit using a CubeSat platform. Flight data show that LightSail 2 successfully controlled its orientation relative to the Sun, with sustained periods of apogee raising and increasing orbital energy. The LightSail 2 solar sail was 5.6 m on a side and has a total deployed area of 32 m². Four independent triangular aluminized Mylar® sail sections 4.6 microns thick were Z-folded and stowed into four sail bays. The sail segments were deployed by four 4 m Triangular Retractable And Collapsible booms …

Lessons Learned During Testing Through Commissioning Of The Joint Brazil-Us Sport Mission, Lidia Shibuya Sato, Luís Loures, Victor Costa, Rodolfo Wottrich, Ana Carolina Jeronymo, Herbi Júnior, Pedro Lyra Cabral, Renan Menezes, Mateus Oliveira, Thadeu Carvalho, Emerson Oliveira, Denis Vieira, Charles Swenson, Joseph Casas, Linda Krause, Joaquim Costa

Small Satellite Conference

SPORT is an international partnership mission between Brazil and the United States to study ionospheric space weather processes that occur at low latitudes. Operating a CubeSat on orbit is certainly one of the most exciting milestones of a CubeSat project, but it is only a part of the mission. To be able to achieve this milestone the efforts of the engineering team were focused late in the project on the integration, testing, and delivery followed by the on-orbit commissioning of the observatory. This paper details the major events and lessons learned by the SPORT team during these phases of the …

The First Chilean Satellite Swarm: Approach And Lessons Learned, Cristobal Garrido, Elías Obreque, Matias Vidal-Valladares, Samuel Gutierrez, Marcos Diaz Quezada, Carlos Gonzalez, Camilo Rojas, Tamara Gutierrez

Small Satellite Conference

SUCHAI 2, SUCHAI 3, and Plansat are three 3U CubeSats designed, manufactured, integrated, and tested by the Space and Planetary Exploration Laboratory at the University of Chile (SPEL). They were launched into space on April 1, 2022, aboard a D-Orbit ION platform. The ION deployer was carried into space on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter 4 mission. The nanosatellites included payloads and experiments from several other national and international groups, all featuring different missions and configurations.

We developed the three CubeSats simultaneously. Some subsystems are the same, while others are specific to each satellite. They include scientific and technical payloads. …

Capstone: Recovery & Operations Of A Tumbling Small Satellite In Deep Space, Hannah Umansky, Kyle Clarke, Rebecca Rogers, Austin Hannon, Jack Kelly, Tristan Latchu, Austin Williams, Brennan Bryant

Small Satellite Conference

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) satellite, deployed in July 2022, experienced a thruster anomaly in September 2022 during its Ballistic Lunar Transfer (BLT) into the Earth-Moon L2 Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). CAPSTONE's primary mission objective to achieve and maintain NRHO serves to validate the cislunar CONOPS contemplated for NASA's Lunar Gateway. Terran Orbital designed and built CAPSTONE, and serves as the operator of the on-orbit spacecraft. Advanced Space owns and operates the CAPSTONE payload and its software on behalf of NASA, as well as performs mission navigation and maneuver design.

This 12U+ lunar …

Click-A: Optical Communication Experiments From A Cubesat Downlink Terminal, William Kammerer, Peter Grenfell, Jacob Harburg, Nicholas Belsten, Hannah Tomio, Paul Serra, Kerri Cahoy, Tim Brothers, Michael Person, Myles Clark, Dani Coogan, John Conklin, David Mayer, Jan Stupl, John Hanson

Small Satellite Conference

The CubeSat Laser Infrared CrosslinK (CLICK) mission is a technology demonstration of low size, weight, and power (SWaP) CubeSat optical communication terminals for downlink and crosslinks. The mission is broken into two phases: CLICK-A, which consists of a downlink terminal hosted in a 3U CubeSat, and CLICK-B/C, which consists of a pair of crosslink terminals each hosted in their own 3U CubeSat. This work focuses on the CLICK-A 1.2U downlink terminal, whose goal was to establish a 10 Mbps link to a low-cost portable 28 cm optical ground station called PorTeL. The terminal communicates with M-ary pulse position modulation (PPM) …

Equuleus: Initial Operation Results Of An Artemis-1 Cubesat To The Earth—Moon Lagrange Point, Ryu Funase, Shintaro Nakajima, Yosuke Kawabata, Ryota Fuse, Hokuto Sekine, Hiroyuki Koizumi

Small Satellite Conference

EQUULEUS is a 6U CubeSat developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Tokyo, aiming to reach the Earth-Moon second Lagrange point (EML2) and perform scientific observations there. After being inserted into a lunar transfer orbit by SLS Artemis-1 on November 16, 2022, the spacecraft completed checkout operations and successfully performed a delta-V maneuver and subsequent trajectory correction maneuver. This enabled a precise lunar flyby as planned and successful insertion into the orbit toward EML2, which will take advantage of multiple lunar gravity assists and the gravity of the Sun. EQUULEUS is equipped with a water …

Operations Systems Engineering For The Lunar Flashlight Mission, Michael Hauge, E. Glenn Lightsey, Mason Starr, Shan Selvamurugan, Graham Jordan, John Cancio, Conner Awald

Small Satellite Conference

Lunar Flashlight, a 6U CubeSat developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and operated by students at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT), was launched in December 2022 with a mission to demonstrate novel small satellite technologies, including a first-of-its-kind green monopropellant system, and to map surface water ice in permanently shadowed regions of the lunar south pole using near-infrared laser reflectometry. As operations systems engineers, the GT team has maintained, developed, and refined models of spacecraft subsystems as well as coordinated the project's approach to anomaly response and fault protection. This paper reports how analysis of flight data and …

The Radfxsat-2 Mission To Measure Seu Rates In Finfet Microelectronics, Chloe A. Champagne, Brian D. Sierawski, Rebekah A. Austin, James M. Trippe, Kevin M. Warren, Andrew L. Sternberg, Robert A. Reed, Robert A. Weller, Eric Skoog, Gerald W. Buxton Iii, W. Burns Fisher, Robert Davis, Christopher E. Thompson, Mark L. Hammond

Small Satellite Conference

The RadFxSat-2 mission was launched January 17, 2021 with Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne under the NASA ELaNa-20 initiative. RadFxSat-2 carries a radiation effects payload designed to investigate single event upsets (SEUs) in sub-65 nm commercial memories, including a FinFET-based memory. Sub-65 nm technologies have demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to low-energy protons, but current models have not considered low-energy protons as a source of SEUs. Missions utilizing the latest commercial technologies could experience a higher error rate than predicted. RadFxSat-2 was designed to assess SEU rates for FinFET SRAMs operated in low-Earth orbit (LEO), a proton-heavy environment. Details of the mission and data …

Cfs Basecamp: A Flight Software Stem Education Ecosystem, David Mccomas, William Tandy

Small Satellite Conference

The open-source core Flight System (cFS) Basecamp ecosystem includes several cFS-based STEM educational projects and provides the infrastructure for users to create their own. Basecamp's tool suite and app repositories function much like a smartphone's App Store model. The initial cFS Basecamp installation includes several built-in tutorials that help users learn NASA's cFS application environment and shorten their path to productivity. Online resources describe Basecamp's goal-oriented software/hardware projects. These projects are designed so students understand how to create app-based solutions to meet a particular goal. This approach evolved after years of being engaged with teaching the cFS and learning which …

University-Class Spacecraft In 2023: More Missions, More Problems?, Michael Swartwout

Small Satellite Conference

A "university-class" mission is one where the training of the students is as least as important as the in-orbit results from the spacecraft. Since the University of Melbourne's Australis OSCAR 5 launched in 1970, nearly 300 universities around the world have built & launched 720 university-class spacecraft. But, most of these events are recent: more than half of these schools had their first launch in the last five years. Coincidentally, 5 years ago is the last time that a paper like this was presented at the conference. And thus it's worth updating the previous work with all these new data …

A New Approach To High Reliability Uhf Controllers, Chris Bull, Kerry Clapham, Robin Mcneill, Christopher Hann

Small Satellite Conference

Many available UHF antenna positioners lack reliability for high-intensity commercial use. Similarly, many UHF antenna controllers lack appropriate interfaces for remote and automated control.

We present a number of ways to simplify UHF ground station design and improve reliability. We also describe an improved antenna controller we have designed, with Ethernet connectivity, human- and machine-friendly interfaces, detailed metrics for fault diagnosis, and an improved control algorithm designed to minimise gearbox stresses and improve pointing accuracy.

Commute: Cubesat Swarm Orbital Maneuvers For A Mission To Study Uranus’ Atmospheric Environment, Dylan Barnes, Andrew Cummings, Paula Do Vale Pereira

Small Satellite Conference

Following recommendations from the 2023-2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey, new mission concepts are being developed with the focus of launching Uranus’ exploration missions in the early 2030s. To minimize both fuel consumption and cruise time on our way to Uranus, we propose a Jupiter-Uranus gravity assist trajectory using a Falcon Heavy Expendable Launcher to deliver a 3000 kg spacecraft to Uranus orbit in under seven years. The spacecraft will be composed of a mothership of 2000 kg wet mass and a swarm of CubeSats with a combined wet mass of 1000 kg. Using the ephemerides data of Earth, …

Error-Resilient Compression: Using Deep Learning And Polar Coding To Improve Satellite Communication, Aiden Hammond, Jordanne Brisby, Deepak Mishra

Small Satellite Conference

MEMESat-1 is a flying transceiver for the amateur radio community with a packet data rate of 9600 baud (Lassiter et al). This severely limits the amount of data that can be transmitted on each pass by aground observer, hence, compression must occur. Due to the general similarity of the expected payload data (such as Figure 2), w e hypothesize that compression via deep learning is the best approach.

A Low-Cost, Miniaturized, Homogeneity-Optimized Helmholtz Cage For Cubesat Attitude Control Ground Testing, Devdigvijay Singh, Michael Galvin

Small Satellite Conference

Reduced launch costs and increased interest from researchers and the public have enabled CubeSats to undergo significant evolution in the past decade, expanding their applications to include a broad range of fields such as communication, navigation, observation, education, and science demonstration. For a wide variety of nanosatellite missions ranging from Earth remote sensing to astronomy-related measurements and space debris tracking, the development of passive or active attitude control systems (PACS/AACS) is of great importance. Of the various attitude control and stabilization methods for small satellites, magnetic techniques such as magnetorquers and hysteresis rods offer modest pointing and detumbling capability while …

Design Of The Hosted Software Application For The Visors Mission, Ebenezer Arunkumar, Antoine Paletta, Glenn Lightsey

Small Satellite Conference

The VIrtual Super Optics Reconfigurable Swarm (VISORS) mission is a distributed space telescope consisting of two 6U CubeSats that utilize precision formation flying to detect and study the fundamental energy release regions of the solar corona. The inherent complexities and risks associated with two spacecraft operating in close proximity, as well as the unique restrictions of the spacecrafts’ design, make careful autonomous execution crucial to the success of the mission. To address these challenges, this paper outlines the development of the Hosted Software Application (HSA) flight software which manages the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) algorithms, the payload finite state …

Testing Aromatic Thermosetting Copolyester Debonding Characteristics In Low-Earth Orbit, Samantha Betts

Small Satellite Conference

The mission concept proposed seeks to advance the state of the art for on-orbit deployment of joint mechanisms using a family of novel high-strength reversible adhesives known as Aromatic Thermosetting coPolyesters (ATSP). These are self-healing polymers that can be used as a robust reversible adhesive capable of many cycles of reversibility through application of heat and pressure. Their use in orbital deployment could lead to a significant decrease in the complexity and weight penalty associated with deployable mechanisms. Orbital aging studies are being performed to test the material in a relevant environment, but testing of the reversible adhesion has only …

Uhf Ground Station For Satellite Communications: The Design, Build, Test, And Lessons Learned, Anargyros Kriezis, Regan Mah, Linda Hu, Celvi Lisy, Zayn Patel, Utsav Gupta, Bernard Adjei-Frimpong, Whitney Lohmeyer

Small Satellite Conference

The Olin Satellite + Spectrum Technology and Policy (OSSTP) Group was founded at Olin College of Engineering to explore real-world, project-based learning with apprenticeship-styled educational experiences in satellite communications. In 2019, OSSTP was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Cubesat Ideas Lab Grant for the Space Weather Atmospheric Reconfigurable Multiscale Experiment (SWARM-EX) mission in collaboration with five other institutions (CU Boulder, Georgia Tech, Stanford, Western Michigan, and University of Southern Alabama) to develop and launch three CubeSats. This mission aims to serve as a pathfinder demonstration of swarm operations at separation distances of 1-1000 km using differential drag and onboard …

The Doppler Wind Temperature Sensor (Dwts) Flight Evaluation And Experiments (Tes-16,17), Marcus Murbach, Lawrence Gordley, Joe Gubeli, Benjamin T. Marshall, Arwen Davé, Anthony Colaprete, Alejandro Salas, Ali Kashani, Kwabena Boateng, Avery Brock, Malachi Mooney-Rivkin, Stanley M. Krześniak

Small Satellite Conference

The Doppler Wind and Temperature Sounder instrument (DWTS) developed by Global Atmospheric Technologies and Sciences (GATS) is a simple yet powerful tool with the potential to become a new window through which the study of upper atmosphere dynamics can occur. Based around a defense-grade infrared camera peering through a static gas cell used as a scanning spectral filter, a DWTS instrument can infer wind velocities and kinetic temperatures throughout the stratosphere and lower thermosphere. The DWTS achieves this scanning by measuring the induced Doppler shift and Doppler broadening of emissions as they pass through the DWTS field of view (Gordley, …

Engineering Challenges Of A Cubesat Mission Around The Moon: First Steps On The Path To Selenita, Tiago Matos, Luís Loures, Lidia Sato, Victoria Rodrigues, Thadeu Carvalho, Renan Menezes, Bruno Schuster, Denis Vieira, Paull Acosta, Douglas Arena, Ana Carolina Jeronymo, Heidi Haviland, Linda Krause

Small Satellite Conference

Flying beyond Earth's sphere of influence has been part of the main goals in space exploration. Efforts of the Artemis program now encompass different classes of missions, including CubeSats. With the challenges of deep space as mission drivers, planning, designing, launching, and operating a CubeSat for a Moon mission is proving to be a step up in difficulty. In this context, SelenITA Mission is conceived as a science mission supporting the Artemis efforts, planned to operate at Low-Lunar Orbit (LLO), flying below 200 km gathering space weather and geophysics observations, marking the first Brazilian mission to the Moon. This paper …

The Nasa Cygnss Smallsat Constellation, Christopher Ruf, Darren Mckague, Clara Chew, April Warnock, William Wells

Small Satellite Conference

The NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) is a constellation of eight microsatellites in low earth orbit at ~525 km altitude and 35 deg inclination. CYGNSS was launched in December 2016 for a planned 2 year mission and 7 of the 8 spacecraft continue to operatue nominally as of May 2023. Each microsatellites carries a bistatic radar receiver to measure reflected GPS signals from the Earth surface. The measurements can be converted to surface wind speed and latent and sensible heat flux over the ocean, and to surface soil moisture and wetland extent over land. Measurements penetrate through all …

The Esa Φsat-2 Mission: An A.I Enhanced Multispectral Cubesat For Earth Observation, Nicola Melega, Valentina Marchese, Agnė Paškevičiūtė-Kidron, Bernardo Carnicero Dominguez, Nicolas Longepe, Oriol Aragon Casaled, Irina Babkina, Alessandro Marin, Hano Steyn, Léonie Buckley, Jakub Nalepa, Sofia Oliveira, Giorgia Guerrisi

Small Satellite Conference

As part of an initiative to promote the development and implementation of innovative technologies on-board Earth Observation (EO) missions, the European Space Agency (ESA) kicked off the first Φsat related activities in 2018 with the aim of enhancing the already ongoing FSSCAT project with Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The selected Φsat-2 concept will provide a combination of on-board processing capabilities (including AI) and a medium to high resolution multispectral instrument from Visible to Near Infra-Red (VIS/NIR) able to acquire 8 bands (7 + Panchromatic) provided by SIMERA SENSE Europe (BE). These resources will be made available to a series of dedicated …