Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Model-Based Engineering Education With Practical Activities Using Hepta-Sat, Takumi Sato, Taiga Zengo, Masahiko Yamazaki

Small Satellite Conference

In this study, we designed and implemented an education using CubeSat educational kit “HEPTA-Sat” to acquire Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practically. We share the lessons learned there.

In the development of complicated systems such as CubeSat, it is difficult to manage requirements and tasks only in the mind, and omissions and inconsistencies may occur. And, in communication between members and document accumulated in the project, there is often a contradiction with the receiver, since there is implicit information which is not clarified in the background. Therefore, by describing a system in a modeling language and managing it by connecting various …

Development Of Formation Flying Cubesats And Operation Systems For The Canyval-C Mission: Launch And Lessons Learned, Geuk-Nam Kim, Sang-Young Park, Taeyang Lee, Dae-Eun Kang, Namgyu Kim, Soobin Jeon, Eunji Lee, Youngbum Song

Small Satellite Conference

The CubeSat Astronomy NASA and Yonsei using Virtual telescope ALignment for Coronagraph (CANYVAL-C) is a technology demonstration mission that shows the concept of a virtual space telescope using two CubeSats in formation flying. The final goal of the mission is to obtain several images of the solar corona during an artificial solar eclipse created by the two CubeSats, Timon (1U CubeSat) and Pumbaa (2U CubeSat). To implement this mission, two CubeSats in formation flying and a ground segment have been developed. The CubeSats were constructed mainly with commercial off the shelf components, sharing the bus architecture. The payload of each …

Upmsat-2 Micro-Satellite: In-Orbit Technological Demonstration For Education And Science, Elena Roibás-Millán, Javier Pérez-Álvarez, Santiago Pindado, Javier Cubas, Ángel Sanz-Andrés, Sebastián Franchini, Isabel Perez-Grande, Gustavo Alonso, Andrés García-Pérez, Marcos Chimeno-Manguan, Ignacio Torralbo, Juan Zamorano, Juan Antonio De La Puente, Jorge Garrido, Alejandro Alonso, Alejandro Gómez-San Juan, Javier Piqueras, Lilian Peinado, Arturo González-Llana, José Miguel Álvarez Romero, Juan Bermejo

Small Satellite Conference

The UPMSat-2 micro-satellite was launched on September the 3rd 2020 at 01:51:10 UTC from Kourou spaceport in French Guyana. The VV16 Vega Flight has been the first low Earth orbit rideshare commercial flight with a total of 53 satellites (7 of them micro-satellites) to be released by the launch vehicle, arranged in the modular SSMS (Small Spacecraft Mission Service) dispenser. UPMSat-2 is an educational, scientific and in-orbit technological demonstration microsatellite project led by the IDR/UPM research institute from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain. This mission can be considered as a logical extension of the IDR/UPM Institute activities focused on …

Space-Based Ionosonde Receiver And Visible Limb-Viewing Airglow Sensor (Sirvlas): A Cubesat Instrument Suite For Enhanced Ionospheric Charge Density Measurements, Andrew Healey, Benjamin Cohen, Santiago Lisa, Ryan He

Small Satellite Conference

Spatially and temporally varying plasma in the ionosphere refracts passing electromagnetic waves, affecting services including over-the-horizon radar, global positioning systems, and long-distance amateur radio communication. The reliability of these services requires accurate measurements of the charge density of ionospheric plasma. Current methods for estimating ionospheric charge density include ground-based radar soundings in the high frequency (HF) band and airglow limb sensing, typically in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrum. SIRVLAS is a low-cost, compact instrument suite for these measurements designed by blair3sat, a high school satellite team based in Montgomery County, Maryland. It takes electron density measurements below the F peak …

Small Satellite Design At The Upm Master In Space Systems (Muse), Santiago Pindado, Javier Cubas, Elena Roibás-Millán, Javier Pérez-Álvarez, Ángel Sanz-Andrés, Sebastián Franchini, Isabel Perez-Grande, Gustavo Alonso, Andrés García-Pérez, Marcos Chimeno-Manguan, Ignacio Torralbo, Juan Zamorano, Alejandro Alonso

Small Satellite Conference

The Master in Space Systems (Máster Universitario en Sistemas Espaciales – MUSE) at UPM (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) is an academic program organized at Instituto Universitario de Microgravedad “Ignacio Da Riva” (IDR/UPM) research institute. This is a 2-year Project Based Learning (PBL) master program which started in 2014. Since the first year of the MUSE, the students have participated actively in the development and construction of the UPMSat-2, an educational, scientific and in-orbit technological demonstration 50 kg-class microsatellite launched on September 2^nd, 2020. Students from MUSE have participated in all phases of the mission, from …

Innovations In The Field Of On-Board Scheduling Technologies, Temenuzhka Avramova, Alessandro Benetton, Christian Cardenio, Riccardo Maderna

Small Satellite Conference

Space missions are characterized by long distances, difficult or unavailable communication and high operating costs. Moreover, complexity has been constantly increasing in recent years. For this reason, improving the autonomy of space operators is an attractive goal to increase the mission reward with lower costs. This paper proposes an onboard scheduler, that integrates inside an onboard software framework for mission autonomy. Given a set of activities, it is responsible for determining the starting time of each activity according to their priority, order constraints, and resource consumption. The presented scheduler is based on linear integer programming and relies on the use …

Id, Gps Tracking, 24/7 Tag Link For Cubesats And Constellations: Flight Results, Matthew C. Voss, Jeff F. Dailey, Matthew B. Orvis, Hank D. Voss, Ken Kiers, Stefan Brandle, Andrew Glaze, Art White, Jeffrey Roberts, Mike Coletti, Mike Miller

Small Satellite Conference

The tiny 40-gram EyeStar-Tag processor, GPS, and radio link will ID its satellite with GPS and critical status data within a minute after turn-on. The autonomous low power EyeStar Tag GPS (20mW for 3D lock) is now at TRL-9 based on the successful release and operation of the Spaceflight Inc. ring on the 1/24/2021 rideshare launch. The orbit (530 km polar) was projected using GPS seven element arrays to generate, on the fly, the future ephemeris predictions while monitoring critical fight systems. The Tag continues to transmit over the Globalstar network of satellites and ground stations the GPS elements and …

Unisat-7: A Flexible Iod Platform With Orbital Maneuvering Capabilities, Riccardo Di Roberto, Nicola Sparvieri, Filippo Graziani, Nicolas Bellomo, Daniele Pavarin, Elena Toson, Fabiana Milza

Small Satellite Conference

New Space technology for Small Satellites has greatly advanced in the past five years. These progresses shall match with a swift integration and testing phase, to be readily marketable, therefore IOD missions are essential to expedite project outcomes.

GAUSS has started working on Small Satellites since 1990s, with its first satellite, UNISAT, launched in 2000. In 2013, UNISAT-5 was the first platform to accomplish in-orbit-release of third-party satellites, with UNISAT-6 following in less than one year.

UNISAT-7 is the latest addition to the UNISAT series: a 32kg microsatellite designed and manufactured by GAUSS Srl (a spin-off company of Scuola di …

Implementation Of Rfid In Arignar Anna Central Library, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore: A Case Study, Anandhi C Sr, Sarangapani Ramasamy Sr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), a technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify items or individuals. The library started utilizing RFIDs system to supplant their electro-attractive and bar code system in the last part of the 1990s. This paper attempts to discover detailed information about the new implementation of RFID in Arignar Anna Central Library and focuses on a different component of the system and their standards. The AACL started using RFID in the year 2017 under the supervision of the University Librarian, for their regular activities like circulation, shelf management, stock verification shelf rectification, and theft detection, etc. …

New Generation Of Multi-Bands S-X-Ka Ground Station For Smallsats, Michele Switalski, Arnaud Robert

Small Satellite Conference

The LEGION 400 is the new generation of 4m-class antenna system released by Safran Data Systems. Originally designed for Mega-Constellations, the LEGION 400 benefits from a unique tri-band S/X/Ka concentric feed, patented by Safran, combined with a lean and an ultra accurate pedestal.

Safran Data Systems offers its customers total flexibility in building up a scalable ground segment for the long term, with a true one-stop-shop for the complete system, including antenna, radome, RF, baseband, station Monitoring & Control as well as scheduler.

The LEGION 400 is applicable whether you need to support smallsats, launch vehicles or …

Spectrum Sensing Of Cognitive Radio For Leo Cubesat Swarm Inter-Communication, Chengtao M. Xu, Thomas Yang, Houbing H. Song

Small Satellite Conference

Low earth orbit CubeSat swarms provide improvement in the spatial and temporal resolution of remote sensing, rural communication and space exploration due to their innovative and economical satellite design. Unlike conventional large satellites, which demand high transmission power for data exchange, the CubeSat swarm communication system provides interoperability, high data rate between networked nodes, and global coverage with real-time measurement. The main challenges facing CubeSat swarms include inefficient usage of spectrum resources and increased delay of data exchange, and the issues become more severe with increased number of on-orbit CubeSats. Often, Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio is proposed as a …

La Jument: Student Created Cubesat For Remote Sensing And Software Testing, Eugene Park, David Barnhart, David Gutierrez, Eva Prestamo, Morgan Farrier, Spencer Wedel, Stephen Hunt

Small Satellite Conference

La Jument is USC’s 4th CubeSat mission built in partnership with Lockheed Martin to carry their payload to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). USC’s primary research goal for this project is creating a transmission system between the student run ground station at USC’s campus and the spacecraft in orbit.

Tumnanosat, 1u Kibocube Nanosatellite Developed At The Technical University Of Moldova, Viorel Bostan, Nicolae Secrieru, Valentin Ilco, Vladimir Melnic, Alexei Martiniuc, Vladimir Varzaru

Small Satellite Conference

The National Center for Space Technologies (NCST) of Technical University of Moldova (TUM) has been oriented towards a series of nanosatellites, according to the international standard CubeSat. In 2019, NCST participated in the fourth round of the KiboCUBE Program with the nanosatellite "TUMnanoSAT".

KiboCUBE Program is a collaboration between UNOOSA and JAXA that aims to provide to the United Nations Organization members opportunity to launch CubeSat satellites developed for educational and research purposes.

The NCST team was selected by the Japan Aerospace Agency (JAXA) and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) for the fourth round of the …

Exploring The Det Vs Mppt Trade For Cubesat To Espa Sized Earth-Orbiting Spacecraft, Aaron Aboaf, Jerome Hittle

Small Satellite Conference

Previous research has evaluated different EPS topologies from efficiency, reliability, and cost perspectives, but has yet to incorporate orbital dynamics and mission attitude constraints into the overall evaluation of the most effective eps topology for a specific mission's needs. For efficient system architecture design, systems engineers must quickly assess the orbit-average maximum load that can be accommodated based on the orbit, pointing constraints, solar array collection area, and EPS efficiency to determine operational feasibility. The authors present preliminary findings showing that attitude constraints and the inclination/β-angle have significant effects on the available energy the spacecraft can capture and …

Data Modelling And Code Automation For Space Systems Software, David Santos Gil, Mukesh Jha, Hessa Alshamsi

Small Satellite Conference

Due to the autonomous nature of spacecraft, on-board devices feature relatively complex functionality in their software, including interface(s) that provide telecommands and telemetry. Once in space, the devices are physically inaccessible and even a small defect can cause a major failure from which recovery is impossible. To prevent defects with such consequences, the development of on-board software for space applications requires a substantial investment in quality and additional manual work results in increased cost. Therefore, it is necessary to consider opportunities that reduce manual work while minimizing the impact in quality.

This paper presents the particular solution adopted for the …

Lessons Learned From Development Of Web-Based Mission Operations Software, Nathan Chow, Logan Pulley, Michael Lembeck

Small Satellite Conference

The Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois (LASSI) is responsible for the development of, and mission operations for, a series of student built CubeSats. The Steven R. Nagel Mission Operations Center (MOC) provides the facilities and software systems required to track and communicate withthe satellites. Mission operations software has been designed with a flexible and familiar user experience supporting not just traditional workstations but also mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This paper discusses the motivation behind choosing a web-based architecture for the scalable, full-stack design underlying the MOC software system. Also presented is the deliberate selection of …

Automated Fault-Detection For Small Satellite Pointing Control Systems Using One-Sided Learning, Yujia Huang, Philip A. Ferguson

Small Satellite Conference

In this paper, we propose a ground-based automated novelty detection system for a small satellite attitude dynamics control system using a one-sided learning algorithm: One-Class Support Vector Machine (OC-SVM) method. This fault-detection system was designed to only learn from nominal behavior of the satellite during the commissioning phase and to identify and detect anomalies when there was a subtle behavioral failure in the attitude control system. The detection system was trained by only observing the nominal attitude dynamics behavior of a small satellite for a period of time. Training data was obtained from reaction wheel outputs in a healthy attitude …

Osam-2 Capabilities, Trey Clinton, Sean Lantto

Small Satellite Conference

Archinaut Development

• Phase 1: Additive Manufacturing proven in a simulated LEO environment in June 2017
• Phase 1 Option: Combination demonstrated in a simulated LEO environment in September 2018
• Phase 2: Class D NASA flight demonstration mission to autonomously manufacture polymer beams on orbit

Proliferated Leo Constellation Modeling & Simulation With Information Assurance, Leigh Anderson, David Anderson, Jeremy Fix

Small Satellite Conference

Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) constellations allow for network, on-orbit processing, and battlefield management resiliency through disaggregation of the traditionally small number of high-value space assets. pLEO constellations present unique challenges. Developing a complex mesh network able to dynamically recover from active counterspace, cyber-security, and environmental threats, while providing uninterrupted data-center-like processing, requires advanced modeling capability throughout its buildout. Management of resource utilization, task migration, data fusion, software and firmware updates, and distribution of intelligence across the constellation requires complex integration and autonomy. Mission execution requires secure communication between the pLEO constellation and all consumers. The path to developing solutions …

Attitude And In-Orbit Residual Magnetic Moment Estimation Of Small Satellites Using Only Magnetometer, Raunak Srivastava, Roshan Sah, Kaushik Das

Small Satellite Conference

Attitude estimation or determination is a fundamental task for satellites to remain effectively operational. This task is furthermore complicated on small satellites by the limited space and computational power available on-board. This, coupled with a usually low budget, restricts small satellites from using high precision sensors for its especially important task of attitude estimation. On top of this, small satellites, on account of their size and weight, are comparatively more sensitive to environmental or orbital disturbances as compared to their larger counterparts. Magnetic disturbance forms the major contributor to orbital disturbances on small satellites in Lower Earth Orbits (LEO). This …