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Champ - Chippewa Homestead Antenna & Mission Program, Andrew Johnson, Danielle Cleveland, Micah Blackwell

Small Satellite Conference

On January 28, 2021 the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturing Association (MAMA) announced the site selection for the Michigan Launch Initiative (MLI) Satellite Command and Control Communications (C3) center. The Chippewa Homestead Antenna & Mission Program (CHAMP) was selected to host, implement, and conduct the C3 functions for MLI's vertical and horizontal launch capabilities. This poster presents in detail the CHAMP phased implementation strategy to support the complex mission operations needs of the next generation Hybrid Architectures and Mesh Networks.

Optimizing Communications For Cubesats To Commercial Constellations, Christian Rodriguez

Small Satellite Conference

In 2008, Florida International University researchers proposed the world's first Cubesat to Commercial Satellite Network Inter-Satellite Link and created a payload, called PicoPanther, to move data from Cubesats to the Iridium Network. In the years following, dozens of satellites have used the Cubesat to Iridium/Globalstar payload concept and the amount of constellations in Orbit that can be used for Cubesat Inter-satellite links have grown. Cubesats using commercial constellations for communications have the benefit of near instant communication with their Cubesats for health monitoring and data transfer without relying on a global network of gateways. This poster describes software that maximizes …

Inflight Resources Recycling And Pollution Mitigation Impacts Through The Wolfsat-1 Cubesat Mission, Paul Kiesling, Rachel Nussbaum, Alex Castronovo, Finley Strauss, Mili Mohanty, Kevin Simmons

Small Satellite Conference

Mission: A CubeSat to Monitor Enzyme Activity of Ideonella Sakaiensis in the Microgravity Environment

Inspiring The Next Generation: Challenges And Strategies For Onboarding And Retention In An Undergraduate Cubesat Design Team, Cassandra Chanen, Abhishek Nair, Adyn Miles, Annalisa Cognigni, Benjamin Nero, Bruno Almeida, Brytni Richards, Cameron Rodriguez, Catherine Guo, David Maranto, Dylan Vogel, Emma Belhadfa, Eric Van Velzen, Gabriel Sher, Ian Bennett, Ibrahim Pervez, Jason Rock, Ketan Vasudeva, Khalil Damouni, Mingde Yin, Prachi K. Sukhnani, Rima Uraiqat, Rosalind Liang, Samuel Looper, Selena Liu, Shiqi Xu, Suraj Parasuram, Timothy Yeung, William Ferrie, Xi Lan, Yong Da Li

Small Satellite Conference

The University of Toronto Aerospace Team (UTAT) Space Systems Division is a fully student levy-funded, student-led undergraduate design team that develops CubeSats with research-oriented payloads. UTAT’s mission is to provide undergraduate students with unique opportunities to develop engineering design skills outside of the classroom, and therefore has a distinct focus on member growth and education. As an undergraduate student team, UTAT faces a unique set of challenges in onboarding members and maintaining a strong knowledge base on the team. These challenges include onboarding members with limited technical experience, equipping them with satellite design skills, and maintaining high interest levels among …

Ke Ao: A Low-Cost 1u Cubesat For Aerospace Education And Research In Hawaii, Lee Danielle Young, Miguel A. Nunes, A. Zachary Trimble, Christopher Amendola, Aaron Brandt, Hunter Patton, Alexi Perez, Riley Terry, William Tuifua, Douglas Whittingham, Kevin Williams, Amber Imai-Hong

Small Satellite Conference

The Ke Ao satellite is a low-cost 1U CubeSat designed and developed by an undergraduate team of engineering students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) in collaboration with the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL). The primary goal of the mission is to take one or more pictures from space and automatically identify the Hawaiian Islands using Machine Learning Algorithms - this will demonstrate improved onboard operational autonomy in space. A secondary goal of this project is to promote Aerospace Education and Workforce training in Hawaii. The Ke Ao project was inspired by the Hiapo CubeSat initiative of the …

Lessons Learned From The Gt-1 1u Cubesat Mission, Maximilian Kolhof, William Rawson, Radina Yanakieva, Andrew Loomis, E. Glenn Lightsey, Sterling Peet

Small Satellite Conference

With more universities conducting low-cost small satellite development programs, resources for students starting off in satellite design are essential to avoid common pitfalls. Hardware integration and testing of the GT-1 CubeSat revealed both design flaws and strengths that led to a comprehensive list of lessons learned applicable to future CubeSat missions at the Georgia Institute of Technology Space Systems Design Laboratory (SSDL) and within the broader academic community. GT-1 was originally slated to be designed, built, and delivered in nine months with an orbital lifespan of around seven months. However, various schedule delays resulted in the mission spanning over two …

Power Supply For Advanced High Current Payloads, Timothy Anderson, Edmund Burke, Alexander Anthougies

Small Satellite Conference

Protect, Prevent and Enclose (PPE) technologies are employed to stop cell failure propagation, limit cell-to-cell thermal transport, and safely contain flames and debris.

Development Of An Operating Strategy For On-Demand Earth Observation Missions Of The Diwata-2 Microsatellite, Edgar Paolo Violan, Yuji Sato, Yuji Sakamoto, Shinya Fujita, Julie Ann Boanatao, Toshinori Kuwahara, Kazuya Yoshida

Small Satellite Conference

Diwata-2 is the Philippines’ 2nd microsatellite developed by Tohoku University, Hokkaido University, University of the Philippines, and the Philippine Department of Science and Technology. Its primary purpose is gathering remote sensing data through imaging areas of interest for the Philippines. This paper presents the study of Diwata-2’s initial Earth observation pointing performance, investigation of its Attitude Determination and Control System, the tuning of its Star Tracker sensor parameters, the in-flight target pointing calibration, and the sequential scheduling of its components forming an operation strategy for an effective on-demand earth observation mission. This operation strategy has managed to improve the satellite’s …

How Skywatch Uses Serverless Cloud Computing To Aggregate Eo Data For The Masses, Roland Sing

Small Satellite Conference

Problem

• Petabytes of data to process and distribute
• Pent up demand, bottlenecked by immature industry distribution vehicles and antiquated pricing structures

Goals

• no humans in the loop
• easy consumption of data by beginners and experts alike
• machine to machine focus
• low cost to purchase data
• low cost to operate
• timely processing and delivery (minutes not days)

Intelligence And Autonomy In The Sat4eo+ Satellite, Murray Kerr, Stefania Cornara, Antonio Ramirez

Small Satellite Conference

The responsiveness of an Earth observation (EO) service, in terms of the time from the initiation of satellite tasking after an End User request is accepted, until the availability of the Earth Observation product to the End User, is a key metric in many applications, such as security, disaster monitoring and nowcasting, and more generally in enhanced-NRT services.

Elecnor DEIMOS is currently developing its next proprietary Very-High Resolution (VHR) small satellite [1][2], Sat4EO+, to meet current and upcoming market needs for Earth Observation products derived from a sub-meter optical imaging capability. Sat4EO+ is an agile low-cost ~200kg VNIR optical satellite, …

Autonomous Fault-Tolerant Avionics For Small Cots Satellites: To Reality And Prototype, Christian M. Fuchs, Nadia M. Murillo

Small Satellite Conference

In this contribution we present practical experiences from realizing a prototype of the first truly fault-tolerant and autonomously operating avionics suite for miniaturized satellite down to the size of a 2U CubeSat. Our initial demonstrator setup consists of a mix of COTS parts and FPGA development boards, which we gradually expanded in scope and capabilities. After four iterations of PCB development and manufacturing, we have condensed this design to a fully integrated custom PCB-based prototype. Our fourth architecture iteration is stackable and is designed to fit on an 80×80mm PCB footprint. It is furthermore capable of operating as generic satellite …

The Gestalt: A Secure, High Performance, Low Cost Satellite Ground Station Architecture And Its Implementation, Jason Lowdermilk, Simha Sethumadhavan

Small Satellite Conference

In this paper we present The Gestalt, a novel security methodology developed with support from the Office of Naval Research for satellite ground stations systems. While security is often a stated priority for these systems, often it is traded off for better performance, lower cost and reduced design complexity.

We identified two main classes of security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers in small-sat systems: 1) intentionally introduced supply chain vulnerabilities in both software and hardware, and 2) inadvertent coding and logic vulnerabilities in code.

Our engineering methodology reduces the risk of attacks through four methods:

1. Debloating: Ground …

A Low-Voltage, Ultra-Compact Plasma Spectrometer For Small Spacecraft, Earl E. Scime, Amy M. Keesee, Matthew Dugas, Greg Wagner

Small Satellite Conference

Taking advantage of technological developments in wafer-scale processing over the past two decades, such as deep etching, 3-D chip stacking, and double-sided lithography, we have designed, fabricated, and tested the key elements of an ultracompact (1.7cm-x 1.4cm x 1.4cm) plasma spectrometer that requires only low-voltage power supplies, has no microchannel plates, and has a high aperture area to instrument volume ratio. The energy analyzer and collimator components of the instrument are integrated into a single lithographically fabricated layer to optimize alignment of the collimator and eliminate flux reduction penalties typically associated with collimators. We will present tests of the instrument …

Development And Testing Of A Low Flame Temperature, Peroxide-Alcohol-Based Monopropellant Thruster, Darren King, Curtis Woodruff, Justin Camp, David Carroll

Small Satellite Conference

Recent developments in chemical propulsion for CubeSats have been directed away from high flame temperature propellants such as the ionic salts and towards cooler propellants that mitigate thermal management issues. Engineers at CU Aerospace have continued the development of a Monopropellant Propulsion Unit for CubeSats (MPUC), which burns a diluted mixture of hydrogen peroxide and alcohol called CUA MonoPropellant #10 (CMP-X). The propellant was subjected to UN classification tests and has been certified for air transport, demonstrating “little to no reactivity as an explosive in the UN Test Series 1 & 2 tests.” Recent experimental measurements demonstrate that MPUC with …

The Aepex Cubesat Mission: Quantifying Energetic Particle Precipitation Through Bremsstrahlung X-Ray Imaging, Grant D. Berland, Robert A. Marshall, Conner Martin, Deven Mhadgut, Joseph Buescher, Richard A. Kohnert, Spencer Boyajian, Christopher M. Cully, Michael P. Mccarthy

Small Satellite Conference

Fundamental gaps exist in the understanding and observation of energetic particle precipitation (EPP),a solar-terrestrial coupling mechanism that is vital for climatelogical modeling of the atmosphere and magnetosphere. The Atmospheric Effects of Precipitation through Energetic X-rays (AEPEX) mission is a 6U CubeSat that will measure energetic electron spectra and X-ray images in order to quantify the spatial scales and amount of energy input into the atmosphere, and therefore lost from the magnetosphere, via EPP. AEPEX includes two instruments; AEPEX’s FIRE (Focused Investigations of Relativistic Electron) instrument (AFIRE), a TRL 9 electron detector previously flown on the FIREBIRD mission; and the Atmospheric …

International Collaboration Towards Cambodia’S First Small Satellite Education Program: Lessons Learnt, Maximilien Berthet, Morokot Sakal, Penghuy Srean, Sotheara Oum, Polimey Im, Sokserey Srey, Ryohei Takahashi, Jorge Garcia, Nobuhiro Funabiki, Yoichi Suenaga, Rattana Chhin

Small Satellite Conference

Since 2019, students from the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) and the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) have collaborated to set up Cambodia’s first small satellite education program. Around 30 students from both institutions have organized and taken part in joint educational activities, articulated around the development of a 1U CubeSat, which is planned to become Cambodia’s first satellite. This paper presents lessons learnt so far during the cooperative education program. We first explain how students have led the collaboration between a mentor (UTokyo) and mentee (ITC) institution in different countries, mostly online due to the pandemic. We then provide …

Oresat: A Student Team-Based Approach To An Inexpensive, Open, And Modular (1-3u) Cubesat Bus, Andrew Greenberg, David Lay, Glenn Lebrasseur, Emma Levy, Ryan Medick, Hayden Reinhold, Risto Rushford, Miles Simpson

Small Satellite Conference

Most educational CubeSat projects have the same dilemma: not enough money to buy capable COTS hardware, and not enough internal experience (even with teams of students) to build reliable, and inexpensive systems in-house. We present a middle road to the “COTS vs DIY” conundrum: the OreSat bus. OreSat is a fully open source 1U – 3U CubeSat system meant to be built, modified, and flown by student teams. It’s specifically designed to be put together by resource-constrained student teams with “gaps” in their interdisciplinary breadth, as most teams have. OreSat has everything you would expect from a CubeSat system: a …

The Cuava-1 Cubesat—A Pathfinder Satellite For Remote Sensing And Earth Observation, Xueliang Bai, Iver H. Cairns, Patrick Oppel, Youngho Eun, Anthony Monger, Christopher H. Betters, Sergio Leon-Saval, Joe Khachan, James Harpur, Xiaofeng Wu, Yijun Huang, Byung Hoon Cho, Chung Hang Chu, Alex Gaoshan Lian, David Byrne, Flynn Bryant, Daniel Roger Hussey, Mitchell William Galletly, Ada Jiexin Song, Andrew G. Dempster, Joon Wayn Cheong, Ediz Cetin, Tong Wu, Oliver Diessel, Jason Held, Andreas Antoniades, Alix Murdoch, James Unicomb, Paris Michaels, Paris Michaels, Paris Michaels

Small Satellite Conference

In this paper we report a 3U CubeSat named CUAVA-1 designed by the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs, and Their Applications (CUAVA). CUAVA, funded by the Australian Research Council, aims to train students, develop new instruments and technology to solve crucial problems, and help develop a world-class Australian industry in CubeSats, UAVs, and related products. The CUAVA-1 project is the Centre’s first CubeSat mission, following on from the 2 Australian satellites INSPIRE-2 and UNSW-EC0 CubeSats that launched in 2017. The mission is designed to serve as a precursor for a series of Earth observations missions and to demonstrate new …

An Overview Of The Alabama Burst Energetics Explorer (Abex) Mission, Jared Fuchs, Michael Halvorson, Victor Lopez

Small Satellite Conference

The Alabama Burst Energetics eXplorer (ABEX) project is a 12U scientific and educational mission to investigate Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) through spectral analysis and localization of joint gravitational-wave GRB mergers using wavefront timing analysis. The project is in development by a multi-university collaboration across Alabama with design work conducted by students under faculty advisement. The effort is organized and funded by the Alabama Space Grant Consortium and includes the University of Alabama, University of Alabama in Birmingham, University of South Alabama, Auburn University, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. ABEX will deploy on a super-synchronous orbit and propulsively maneuver to …

Design Simulation And Testing Of A Custom Coprocessor For Cubesatellites In Leo, Justin Heimerl, Allen Spain, Alexandria Lin, David Cotton

Small Satellite Conference

An arms race in the last decade between computing performance and power-reduction has led to accelerated progress in both hardware and software, provisioning fast, efficient algorithms and small, capable, low-power hardware devices. Meanwhile, small satellites have become increasingly important in defense and commercial missions, due to their low resource consumption in terms of power, space, and cost. Improvements in computer vision algorithms and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) edge computing introduce a means of addressing challenges posed for spacecraft in the realm of autonomy and perception. The University of Georgia’s Small Satellite Research Laboratory has been working to address these obstacles in …

United States Military Academy (Usma) Space Engineering And Applied Research (Spear): A Cadet's Idea Becomes Reality, Chalie L. Galliand

Small Satellite Conference

Last year, the United States Military Academy (USMA) graduated its first cohort of fully qualified Space Professionals. The Class of 2020 included the first graduates of USMA’s Space and Missile Defense Program. The program was born out of a capability deficit identified by COL Thomas Pugsley, the founder of the Small Satellites Research Group at West Point, over 12 years ago. This was detailed in his paper, Army Space Education: Closing the Gap with Operational Space, presented at the 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites. This new program has ignited inspiration among the Corps of Cadets. A couple of …

Seirios: A Demonstration Of Space Infrared Interferometer By Formation Flying Of Micro-Satellites, Satoshi Ikari, Hirotaka Kondo, Shinichi Nakasuka

Small Satellite Conference

In several decades, space infrared interferometer missions with formation flying have been proposed, but most of the missions were relinquished because their requirements for position and attitude control of satellites are extremely accurate. In order to overcome this issue, we propose to apply the densified pupil spectroscopy to relax control requirements of the baseline distance and attitude to overlap the rays. SEIRIOS is a micro-satellite project to demonstrate the concept of space infrared interferometer with the densified pupil spectrograph. The interferometer is constructed by one 50kg class micro-satellite and two 9U CubeSats in line. The micro-satellite is placed at the …

Hot-Fire Thruster Testing Approach At University Level, Raul A. Cuevas, Pilar Gonzalez Rueda Flores, Amelia D. Greig, Jack Chessa, Ahsan R. Choudhuri

Small Satellite Conference

Technological advancements in chemical propulsion systems leading to increased interest and new applications for small satellites in recent years has created a need for additional testing resources and targeted workforce development. Generally, chemical propulsion testing requires interactions with hazardous materials and environments, which presents significant challenges in a university setting. The Center for Aerospace Exploration and Technology Research (cSETR) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has developed a sustainable hot-fire testing program for chemical thrusters that is operated by undergraduate and graduate students. The program is managed analogous to testing programs in professional settings to enable reliable …

Navigation And Control Performance Utilizing Precision Formation Flying Along A Propellent Optimized Trajectory For The Vtxo Mission, Kyle Rankin, John Krizmanic, Hyeongjun Park, Neerav Shah, Steven Stochaj, Philip Calhoun

Small Satellite Conference

The Virtual Telescope for X-Ray Observations (VTXO) is part of a new generation of distributed component, long focal length telescopes which promise to provide orders of magnitude improvement in angular resolution in the X-ray band over the current state of the art. VTXO will include Phased Fresnel Lenses (PFL), which provide nearly diffraction-limited imaging, with around a 1 km focal length carried by the Optics Spacecraft (OSC), which will fly in a precision formation with the Detector Spacecraft (DSC) approximating a rigid telescope body, with the telescope achieving nearly 50 milli-arcsecond angular resolution in the 4.5 – 6.7 keV X-ray …

Design Approaches For Maintaining Autonomous Determinism Within A Small Sat System-Of-Systems, Kristin Fretz, Owen Gaulle

Small Satellite Conference

Fault Management (FM) is the systems engineering activity focused on the detection of faults, accommodation for off-nominal behavior of a system, and the completion of critical sequences. It encompasses the functional requirements distributed throughout the spacecraft and ground elements that enable prevention, detection, isolation, and recovery from events that upset nominal operations. In contrast, autonomy is a software engineering function that implements a subset of FM requirements allocated to a monitor-response software architecture. While FM and autonomy functions are not directly impacted by spacecraft size, the nature of SmallSat missions with their applications to constellations and systems-of-systems for formation flying, …

Optimising Microsatellite Networks For Iot, Kody Cook

Small Satellite Conference

The Internet of Things (IoT) is having a profound impact on the way we understand the world and its inhabitants. One of the biggest challenges that IoT network providers face is providing global coverage for these IoT devices. Space-based IoT solve this by connecting long-range, low-power, low-bandwidth devices with a constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) microsatellites. These satellite networks typically use store-and-forward communications, where a device uplinks cached data to a passing satellite which is stored on-board until the satellite comes in range of a Ground Station (GS). This data is then downlinked and sent to a cloud platform …

Real-Time Satellite Component Recognition With Yolo-V5, Trupti Mahendrakar, Ryan T. White, Markus Wilde, Brian Kish, Isaac Silver

Small Satellite Conference

With the increasing risk of collisions with space debris and the growing interest in on-orbit servicing, the ability to autonomously capture non-cooperative, tumbling target objects remains an unresolved challenge. To accomplish this task, characterizing and classifying satellite components is critical to the success of the mission. This paper focuses on using machine vision by a small satellite to perform image classification based on locating and identifying satellite components such as satellite bodies, solar panels or antennas. The classification and component detection approach is based on “You Only Look Once” (YOLO) V5, which uses Neural Networks to identify the satellite components. …

Design And Prototyping Of A Superheated Steam Electric Powered Propulsion System For Cubesats, Pablo Leslabay, Franco Scarone, Tomás Giraudy

Small Satellite Conference

A water-based ResistoJet type propulsion system is designed for its use in CubeSats larger than 6U as an orbital maneuvering system. Designed to be self-contained in 1U, its electrically powered evaporator and high-temperature superheater systems are fed by a self-pressurized liquid water tank, thus characterized by simplicity due to the lack of pumps or external pressurizing systems. Moving parts and the use of toxic materials are minimized.

The analytical and parametric models introduced allow an engineer to introduce the changes needed to adapt the propulsion system to different missions, maintaining efficiency. Steady-state thermodynamic and heat transfer analytical models are used, …

Mission Engineering And The Cubesat System Reference Model, David Kaslow, Alejandro Levi

Small Satellite Conference

SSWG has been investigating the applicability of MBSE for designing CubeSats since 2011.

The first phase developed a SysML model of a CubeSat and applied it to the Radio Aurora Explorer. The second phase included modeling behaviors and the third phase included carrying out trade studies.

The current phase is the development of the CubeSat System Reference Model (CSRM).

The CSRM provides the logical architecture of a CubeSat space and ground system. The CSRM logical components are reused as a starting point for a mission-specific CubeSat logical architecture followed by the development of the physical architecture during CubeSat development. The …

Passive Thermal Storage Of Small Satellites For Swap Improvements Over Thousands Of Operational Cycles, Joshua Smay, Clayton Hose, Ryan Spangler

Small Satellite Conference

Satellite manufacturers and customers continue to trend toward higher power, duty cycle-driven components (high powered amplifiers) to get the most capability out of each small/CubeSat put in orbit. The result is more waste heat to manage, requiring engineers to develop a means of transferring or storing the energy without causing a substantial increase in thermal management system mass. Phase Change Material (PCM) heat sinks are being utilized by the industry as a solution to this challenge due to their fully passive operation and ability to reduce the mass of the thermal management system. PCM heat sinks for duty cycle applications …