Digital Commons Network^™

The Picaso Trial: Studying Aya Chronic Illness Self-Management Using A Noncategorical Approach, Sharron L. Docherty, Gary Maslow, Mclean Pollock, Susan Silva, Erin Denio, Lakaya Craig, Remi Misiewicz

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Adolescents and young adults (AYA) with childhood-onset chronic conditions often struggle during the transition from pediatric to adult healthcare and from being a child living with a chronic condition to an adult who effectively manages their chronic condition. Despite shared developmental, psychosocial, and healthcare transition challenges, most research is condition-specific, limiting generalizability and overlooking shared self-management needs (1-3). The PiCASO study evaluated a peer coaching intervention to improve self-management and patient activation among AYA during this critical transition and demonstrated the feasibility and impact of a noncategorical approach.

Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted in which 222 AYA …

High Data Rate Scalable N X 100g Transceiver For Cube/Small Sats For Cis-Lunar, Geo, And Data Center Applications, Christopher Krush, Alexandra Castle-Jones, Victoria Kennedy, Keith G. Petrillo, Mark Storm

Small Satellite Conference

Optical data transport in the cis-lunar regime is an enabling capability for sustained lunar exploration, space-based astronomy, and distributed sensing architectures. This paper presents the design, analysis, and experimental validation of a 100 Gb/s-class coherent optical communication transceiver that extends beyond LEO to GEO and cis-lunar applications. Target missions include lunar constellations, relays at Earth–Moon L1, and direct-to-Earth links, with relevance to NASA Artemis campaigns, enabling a future lunar infrastructure, and high-throughput science missions. This technology also supports future space data centers with the potential for Terabit optical links using WDM.

System-level performance requirements are derived from a parametric link …

Layer 3 Switching, Todd R. Zatorski

Small Satellite Conference

Poster presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

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 …

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 …

Zerodur®: Comprehensive Data Enables The Reliability Of Evidence-Based Design, Dustin Ruth, Florian Gollier, Jesse Bonfeld, Dustin Ruth, Janina Krieg, Thomas Westerhoff, Tony Hull, Jacqueline Caraballo

Small Satellite Conference

ZERODUR® is a glass-ceramic formulated for high-performance optics under imperfect temperature control. Crystallites in a glass matrix balance expansion: crystals shrink while residual glass expands, preserving geometry at fine scale.

This yields the lowest passive thermal response of any optical material-enabling high-contrast, high-resolution, low-scatter imaging and minimal transmission leakage for SmallSat telescopes.

Uncertainty Quantification And Platform Scattering For The Cimr Reflector Antenna, Tonny Rubaek, Pasquale Giuseppe Nicolaci, Cecilia Cappellin

Small Satellite Conference

The Copernicus Microwave Imaging Radiometer (CIMR) employs a 7.1 m conical scanning mesh reflector antenna rotating at 7.8 rpm that operates from L to Ka band. Demanding radiometric accuracies and sensitivities at few tenths of a Kelvin at high spatial resolution are targeted for the instrument. These require a high accuracy in the characterization and modelling of the antenna pattern over 4π, considering any nearby scattering structure, and/or any potential multipath due to the antenna installation on the S/C, as well as the quantification of the uncertainty on the beam efficiency (BE) arising (from possible in-orbit random variations in the …

The Space Cognitive Network: From Fractionated Spacecraft To Collaborative Ai-Enabled Space Infrastructure, Owen Brown, Dennis Gatens, Fred Kennedy, John Moberly, Rusty Thomas, Derek Tournear

Small Satellite Conference

Over the past two decades, small satellite architectures have undergone a fundamental transformation — from platform-centric spacecraft, to globally distributed data-centric constellations. This paper traces that evolution and argues that a third shift is now underway: cognition-centric space architectures enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) as infrastructure. 

We begin by revisiting one of the earliest disruptive space architecture concepts: the fractionated satellite. Developed at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the mid-2000s, the fractionation concept decomposes a monolithic spacecraft into distributed elements. While the original vision emphasized physical subsystem decomposition, the System F6 program ultimately revealed that the greatest …

Asynchronous One-Way Range (Aowr) – Alone Positioning And The Applications, Junichiro Kawagichi, Shingo Nishimoto

Small Satellite Conference

The paper first reports the recent operational results of the HOKUSHIN satellite. It explains how our extended code correlation method has performed and provides link threshold information, specifically the demonstrated C/N0 figures. The paper next focuses on cis-lunar space applications, beginning with direct AOWR-alone positioning directly from Earth using three or more small-aperture ground stations. The application employs a ‘Self-Positioning’ strategy. This system operates in cis-lunar space with 3-meter-class ground stations and CubeSats larger than 6U in size equipped with 200x300 mm patch-array antennas on. It enables universities and startups to conduct genuine lunar exploration. The team won the Strategic …

Intelligence Where Data Is Born: Vision Transformer-Based On-Orbit Change Detection For Earth Sensing, Matthew Morabito, Faries Tadros, Catherine Ordun, Michael S. Sellers, Daniel Wald

Small Satellite Conference

This paper introduces a model framework for autonomous hyperspectral segmentation that couples a foundation model with a supervised segmentation head to enable compact, high performance on-orbit scene understanding. This approach is designed to deliver end-to-end onboard processing, inference, confidence scoring, and prioritization so the spacecraft performs interpretation at or near image collection time and minimizes downlink usage by transmitting only high-value or high-interest outputs rather than full image streams. A key design element is adaptive intelligence over mission lifetime: low-size, over-the-air partial models updates as small as kb-scale enable post-launch retuning and mission-specific refinement without GB-scale data transfer. By reusing …

Magnetic Balancing For Microvibration Reduction In Passive Magnetic Bearings For Smallsat Reaction Wheels, Deckers Niel, Baekeland Mante, Cuypers Cedric, Seiler Rene, Vandepitte Dirk, Delabie Tjorven

Small Satellite Conference

Reduction and mitigation of microvibrations constitutes a crucial field of interest in the research of spacecraft reaction wheels. This applies all the more so in small satellites, where even minimal sources of vibrations lead to imprecision of onboard instruments. To address this, magnetic bearings offer contactless support, and thus prevent several sources of microvibrations that exist in classical ball bearings, for instance the mechanical imperfections in rolling elements. The inherently low stiffness of magnetic bearings also significantly reduces the transmitted forces in reaction wheels. Another advantage of contactless support is its potential longer lifetime because of the absence …

Delay/ Disruption Tolerant Networking In Cislunar Space, Sara Garcia-Beech, Rebecca Besser, Elizabeth Geist, Theresa Beech, Mike Palsson, Krishnan Narayanan, Ben Anderson

Small Satellite Conference

DTN (Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking) is at foundation of NASA's LunaNet architecture, which will enable the robust communications, navigation, and networking capabilities needed to establish a long-term presence on the Moon. DTN is a network architecture composed of several different protocols that are designed to provide internetworking functionality and standardized multi-hop, end-to-end data delivery in highly stressed environments that are not optimal for traditional Internet Protocols. Bundle Protocol (BP) version 7, a store-and-forward protocol intended to run at the application layer on top of convergence layer protocols, provides the key delay tolerance functionality of DTN and is designed to handle intermittent …

Recovery Of Grus-1e From Magnetic Torquer Loss Using Data-Driven Open-Loop Attitude Steering, Nader Ganaba, Takanori Iwata, Minoru Kurata

Small Satellite Conference

In typical low Earth orbit (LEO) operations, the inability to remove excess angular momentum often leads to the decommissioning of a satellite. This paper presents the on-orbit recovery of GRUS-1E, a hundred kg class Earth observation satellite in Axelspace Corporation’s GRUS-1 constellation. The recovery followed the permanent loss of magnetic torquer commanding capability, which in turn disabled the satellite’s nominal reaction wheel momentum unloading. In addition, the satellite experienced persistent disturbance torques that significantly exceeded the combined contributions predicted by standard models, including gravity gradient, solar radiation pressure, aerodynamic drag, and the estimated residual magnetic dipole moment. The magnitude of …

Disksat: On-Orbit Performance And Lessons Learned From The Inaugural Flight Of Two-Dimensional Satellites, Darren Rowen, Catherine Venturini, Garrett Kinum, Brian Hardy, Joseph Gangestad, Lisa Toda, Chris Day, Thomas Pridy, Eddson Alcid, Ziba Shahriary

Small Satellite Conference

DiskSat is a novel spacecraft design that uses a disk-shaped form factor, 1 meter in diameter but only 2.5 cm in depth, to provide unprecedented power-to-mass ratio in a nanosatellite and the potential to operate long-term in very low Earth orbit (VLEO). The inaugural flight of four DiskSats launched on 18 December 2025 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on an Electron rocket, which delivered the satellites to a 550-km altitude orbit at an inclination of 45 deg. Developing DiskSat’s two-dimensional form factor presented a myriad of challenges for power generation, thermal management, attitude control, and deployment that could only be …

Advanced Ai Deployment On Smallsats: A Mixed Precision Approach To Onboard Perception And Fpga-Gated Inference, Margaret Michelsen, Jackson Gardner, Shawn Jones, Jackson Kulik, Mario Harper

Small Satellite Conference

MOTIVATION:

SmallSats are asked to make time-sensitive calls (vessel detection, cloud filtering, debris tracking) but CubeSat-class compute is starved for power, memory, and radiation-tolerant silicon.

Most missions still downlink raw imagery for ground processing, costing hours-to-days of latency and scarce bandwidth. Running inference onboard means solving two separate problems:

• When to run inference: compute and power budgets can’t tolerate a neural network firing on every frame.
• Whether it fits when it does run: the model has to live inside a memory and compute envelope measured in megabytes, not gigabytes.

Toward Plug-And-Play Sensor Integration: A Multi-Protocol Hardware Bridge For Nanosatellites, Pawan Kumar, Moritz P. Heimbach, Shayarrn Khatiwada, Jiten Thapa, Marco Schmidt

Small Satellite Conference

COTS sensors speak many protocols; but the satellite bus understands only a few. An FPGA hardware bridge board reroutes heterogeneous sensor protocols (UART, SPI, RS-422, RS-485) to the single communication channel with minimum latency supporting plug-and-play with no bus redesign.

Design Of A Passive Magnetic Bearing Reaction Wheel For Smallsats And Its Micro-Vibration Performance, Mante Baekeland, Konstantinos Gryllias, Dirk Vandepitte, Cedric Cuypers, Niel Deckers, Tjorven Delabie, René Seiler

Small Satellite Conference

Reaction wheels are a primary source of micro-vibrations aboard satellite platforms, limiting the fine-pointing capability of spacecraft. This paper presents a novel passive magnetic bearing reaction wheel featuring a magnetic–mechanical suspension to reduce operational vibration emissions compared with conventional ball bearing systems. The proposed suspension architecture combines radial permanent magnetic bearings with an axial single-point-contact ball pivot bearing, resulting in a compact, fully passive solution tailored for the SmallSat market. To demonstrate the feasibility of the concept, a hardware prototype was manufactured and tested. Stable operation is achieved across the full operational range up to 4800 rpm. The experimental campaign …

Flight Path: A Microservices Message-Passing Flight Software Architecture For Cesiumastro Element One Satellite, Dylan Pfeifer, Russell Gleason, Nick Bourdon, David Gholami, Daniel Zilavy, Dan Barrera, John Storey

Small Satellite Conference

The CesiumAstro Element One Satellite, designed for multi-band phased array communications in Low Earth Orbit, required a new approach to satellite flight software. The variety of new devices on the satellite bus, fast-paced development schedule, and combination of in-house and purchased subsystems required flight software to incorporate a mixture of programming languages, a mixture of open source and proprietary software, and a pairing of high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) frameworks with new, first-flight software. To achieve integration, assembly, and test on compressed schedule, the flight software paradigm focused on microservices-brokered access to hardware and a message-passing based coordination between software …

Mirzo Ulugbek 6u Cubesat: Modular Structural Design, Analysis, And Ait For Earth Observation Mission Deployment, Hery Steven Mindarno, Louis Alferd Gauvain Lefort, Khabibullokh Olimjon Ugli Azimjonov, Iwase Tomoya, Aashish Sarode, Chinathip Narongphun, Reynel Josue Galindo Rosales, Mehmet Esit, Hanadi Abdalla, Kaito Hamada, Victor Schulz, Jose Rodrigo Cordova Alarcon, Hirokazu Masui, Takashi Yamauchi, Necmi Cihan Orger, Kentaro Kitamura, Mengu Cho

Small Satellite Conference

The Mirzo Ulugbek satellite is a 6U CubeSat designed for Earth Observation (EO) and equipped with a high-resolution camera system. Developed in collaboration between the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) and the Uzbekistan Space Agency, Mirzo Ulugbek will be deployed directly from a launch vehicle into a Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) to enable continuous Earth observation. This paper presents the modular structural design, analysis, and Assembly, Integration, and Testing (AIT) processes that ensure the satellite’s robustness during launch and reliable operation in orbit. The modular design allows efficient integration, disassembly, and reassembly of subsystems, enhancing flexibility during testing. This design approach …

Operating The Sparcs Space Telescope, Kaitlyn Ashcroft, Daniel Jacobs, Evgenya Shkolnik, Judd Bowman, Matthew Kolopanis, Tahina Ramiaramanantsoa, Joe Dubois, Titu Samson, Maria C. Ladwig, Joshua Sink, Ella Greetis, Paulo Gonzalez Soto, Ysabella Mcauliffe, Lilian Prigge, Aaron Boumias, Ishi Shah, Hetvi Patel, Joseph Dukowitz, David R. Ardila, April Jewell, Mark Swain, Shouleh Nikzad, Christophe Basset, Joe Llama, Paul Scowen, Sarah Peacock, Dawn Gregory, Nathaniel Streubel, Logan Jensen, Johnathan Gamaunt, Travis Barman, Victoria Meadows

Small Satellite Conference

Star-Planet Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is a 6U space telescope dedicated to monitoring flares from low-mass stars in the ultraviolet (UV). SPARCS observations of flares across 20 solar systems will be used to better understand the atmospheric evolution, chemistry, and potential habitability of the most common type of exoplanets. SPARCS’ camera uses delta-doped CCD detectors, which are several times more sensitive in the UV than previous detectors. This is technology necessary for future studies of habitable-worlds and star–planet interactions by future missions, such as NASA’s flagship mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory. SPARCS orbits in the “6am terminator” orbit, which provides a …

Multi-Modal Detection And Attribution Algorithm For Low Power Edge Compute Hardware, Margaret Michelsen, Jackson Gardner, Shawn Jones, Jackson Kulik, Mario Harper

Small Satellite Conference

We present a multi-modal detection and attribution algorithm for maritime domain awareness designed to execute on low-power FPGA-based edge compute hardware. Spaceborne hyperspectral sensors generate data volumes far exceeding practical downlink capacity, yet the onboard compute platforms available for real-time processing operate within strict power, memory, and radiation constraints. The proposed algorithm fuses RX anomaly scoring, ACE matched filtering, multi-spectral index evaluation, wake-aware spatial scoring, and spectral glint cancellation in a five-stage pipeline designed for hardware-efficient execution. Mixed-precision quantization assigns FP16 arithmetic to covariance-sensitive stages and INT8 to threshold-based spectral computations, achieving a 12.4× model size reduction and 6.1× compute …

R5 Spacecraft 7, 9, And 10: Proximity Operations, Optical Comm, And Edge Compute, Sam Pedrotty, James Berck, Jack Wisbiski, Kelly Mann, Andrzej Jackowski, Jacob Nunez-Kearny, Robin Onsay, Faheem Quazi, Thomas Kirven, Rob Stoddard, Jordan Fogg, Roger Hunter, Anup Parikh, Alex Bongiovanni, Shrusti Jain, Cassidy Kuehl, Kyle Merry, Luke Duffield

Small Satellite Conference

The Realizing Rapid, Reduced-cost high-Risk Research (R5) project has designed, assembled, integrated, tested, delivered, and launched three spacecraft with three unique missions in fiscal year 2026. Each spacecraft has applied lessons learned from the prior to enhance the cost and schedule reductions of the R5 process while reducing risk and maximizing spacecraft capabilities. Spacecraft 7 (R5-S7) completed suborbital proximity operations around a Falcon 9 upper stage in November of 2025 using an industrial LiDAR for relative navigation. Spacecraft 10 (R5-S10) launched on Transporter 16 and is intended to build on R5-S7’s mission by completing proximity operations in orbit around a …

Advancing Wavelet-Adaptive Interference Cancellation To Enable Cubesat Constellations For High-Fidelity Ac Magnetometry, Surya S. Kalluri, Alex P. Hoffmann, Mark B. Moldwin, James W. Cutler, Yethinder Ragav Lakshmi Kumar, Lauro V. Ojeda

Small Satellite Conference

Dense CubeSat constellations equipped with science-grade AC magnetometers offer a transformative path toward high spatial and temporal resolution of several magnetospheric phenomena that large spacecraft missions cannot resolve. Realizing this vision demands boomless magnetometry– due to deployment risks and resource constraints on nano/micro satellite platforms in large scale –capable of operating in the presence of intense spacecraft-generated electromagnetic interference without the spatial separation that conventional booms provide. This paper advances the characterization of the Wavelet-Adaptive Interference Cancellation for Underdetermined Platforms (WAIC-UP) algorithm across different frequency regimes and two distinct classes of test data. In the 50 Hz to 30 kHz …

In-Transit Debris Remediation: Dual-Use Logistics For Sustainable Cislunar Smallsat Constellations, Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba

Small Satellite Conference

A Debris Crisis Meets A Logistics Boom: Low- and high-Earth orbit keep accumulating debris faster than the atmosphere can clear it, even as NASA's Artemis and CLPS programs establish routine trans-lunar traffic. The 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision and later anti-satellite tests proved that single fragmentation events can irreversibly degrade critical orbital shells, raising the specter of Kessler Syndrome. 

• 46,600+ objects tracked on orbit today, with ~130 million sub-cm fragments (ESA, 2025)
• $500K-$2M cost per kilogram for dedicated ADR, fiscally intractable at system scale
• 5-10 / yr large objects must be removed to stabilize LEO (Liou & Johnson)

The Unit-Economics Problem: Purpose-built …

Small Unmanned Aerial Systems-Assisted Airport Obstruction And Perimeter Inspections, Christopher Candler, Christopher M. Saylor, Marcus Thompson, Tejash Zala

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Airports are required to maintain obstruction-free airspace surfaces under 14 CFR Part 77; however, vegetation and perimeter obstruction management is often conducted through periodic ground inspections and contractor-led surveys that provide only snapshot conditions. These approaches may delay detection of encroachments into approach, transitional, horizontal, or primary surfaces, increasing the risk of operational impacts and reactive mitigation. This study proposes an FAA-aligned framework integrating small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) into obstruction monitoring workflows through recurring, repeatable perimeter inspections. High-resolution optical and LiDAR sensors, combined with RTK/PPK-enabled GNSS correction, generate centimeter-level geospatial datasets that are processed into canopy height models. These …

Beyond Walls And Wires: The Supreme Court’S Recognition Of Digital Privacy Under The Fourth Amendment, Joanna Morris

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

The Founding Fathers included the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights to protect individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures and their right to privacy. However, rapid advances in modern digital technology have challenged traditional definitions of privacy, raising constitutional questions about digital privacy rights. Smartphones and location tracking collects personal information that does not fit neatly within pre-digital era Fourth Amendment doctrines. This research examines how the United States Supreme Court has adapted interpretations of the Fourth Amendment to address digital privacy concerns, focusing on the tensions between Fourth Amendment doctrines and technology that enables extensive government access to …

Legitimacy-Seeking Tactics Employed By Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham In The Idlib Province, Kathrine Lopez

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This paper examines how Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) sought to stabilize and normalize its authority through governance in Idlib from 2017 to 2024. It applies the legitimacy-seeking tactics framework developed by McWeeney, Cunningham, and Bauer (2025) to assess five observable strategies used outside direct combat, provision of public goods, participation in conflict mediation, lobbying and cooperation with external actors, conventional political mobilization, and public outreach. Using qualitative interpretive analysis of primary and secondary sources, the study evaluates how these tactics appeared in HTS-linked governance institutions and public-facing practices during sustained territorial rule. The findings show selective but substantial tactic use. …

Estimating The Effects Of Dark Matter Capture On The Sun Using Asteria And Analytic Stellar Scaling, Skylar G. Butler

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

We investigate how the internal structure of the Sun would change if dark matter particles were present at densities predicted by Galactic halo models. Dark matter capture rates were computed using the Python code Asteria, which implements the multi-element capture formalism of Gould (1987) to determine the rate at which dark matter particles scatter and become gravitationally bound inside the Sun. Because Asteria calculates only the capture rate, we developed a post-processing Python-based analysis to estimate the resulting physical effects using analytic scaling relations from previous solar dark matter studies. These relations were used to compute the effective dark matter …

Programmable Hybrid And Gradient Constant Mean Curvatures For High-Performance Multifunctional Mechanical Metamaterials, Ajith Annavajhula, Gary J. Cheng

MMRL-XMO Industrial Seminar

Architected solids that combine high stiffness, strength, toughness, and ductility in one geometry are difficult to manufacture without specialised feedstocks or sequential consolidation. Two complementary architectures are built here from a single curvature-programmed building-block library of four constant-mean-curvature (CMC) shell topologies — Schwarz Primitive (SP), Schwarz Diamond (SD), Schoen's I-WP, and FRD — that share commensurate cubic facets and admit C0 /C1 /C2 continuity at every interface. Multi-objective hybridisation gives an open-cell metamaterial with specific axial stiffness E*/ρ* = 63.6 GPa·cm3 ·g-1 and specific peak compressive stress σpeak/ρ* = 416.9 MPa·cm3 ·g-1, exceeding the I-WP single family by 40% in …

Multi-Scale In-Situ Powder Stream Characterization For Laser Directed Energy Deposition, Guang Yang, Clara Mock, Salil Bapat, Ajay Malshe

MMRL-XMO Industrial Seminar

Powder stream quality in laser directed energy deposition (L-DED) is a critical determinant of deposition consistency and final part quality, yet it remains largely uncharacterized in real-time during operation. This paper presents a dual-scale, vision-based in-situ characterization framework that addresses powder stream monitoring at two complementary levels: macro-scale flow quality assessment for real-time process monitoring and micro-scale particle tracking for digital twin data acquisition. Both scales are implemented on a single high-speed camera reconfigured between two resolution and frame-rate settings, eliminating the need for dedicated multi-camera infrastructure. At the macro scale, an OpenCV-based image processing pipeline operating at 1280 × …