Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Robust Learning-Based Guidance For Close Proximity Operation Scenarios, Luis Sanchez, Charlotte Crawshaw, Reuben Lynch, Natalia Bajnokova, Murray Ireland, Hazel Quibell, Callum Wilson, Lucy Donnell, Maura Allan, Kevin Worral, Matteo Ceriotti

Small Satellite Conference

ROC-ML is a European Space Agency (ESA) funded project led by Craft Prospect in collaboration with University of Glasgow. The project leverages Machine Learning (ML) approaches to augment the performance of robust motion planning in space applications. The developed method of spacecraft motion planning must be suitably computationally efficient to be deployed on low SWAP space hardware.

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

Small Satellite Conference

1 — Background

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

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

Small Satellite Conference

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

Tailored Catalysts For Space Propulsion, Florian Harth, Kathy Bynum, Ilaria Longobardo, Hendrik Spod, Ingo Gräf, Alexander Bier, Hans-Jörg Wölk

Small Satellite Conference

Why catalysts matter in space propulsion

Chemical propulsion systems remain indispensable for satellite attitude control, orbit correction and collision avoidance maneuvers due to their reliability and high specific impulse. In monopropellant thrusters, the catalyst initiates the rapid decomposition of the propellant, generating hot reaction gases that produce thrust without external ignition. Catalyst performance and especially catalyst stability therefore directly determine ignition reliability, response time, thermal stability and operational lifetime of the propulsion system.

Heraeus Precious Metals provides heterogeneous catalysts tailored for space propulsion by combining precious metal chemistry, support engineering and scalable manufacturing to meet the demanding requirements of aerospace …

Twinning The On-Orbit Power Behavior Of Small Satellites Using Time-Domain Solar And Load Modeling, Nithin Krishnan S S, Vishnupriya P K, Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Jr-Chiun Roger Tsai, Tensae Ali, Jesmin Jose, Athira B S

Small Satellite Conference

Accurate estimation of on-orbit power availability under dynamic attitude conditions is critical to the reliable design of small satellite electrical power subsystems. During tumbling, detumbling, and mode transitions, rapid variations in solar incidence, eclipse exposure, and subsystem demand introduce strong temporal fluctuations that conventional static or orbit-averaged budgeting cannot capture.

This work presents a modular, time-domain power budgeting framework that models the coupled evolution of power generation, consumption, and energy storage under near-realistic attitude and operational conditions. Solar generation is computed from the time-varying Sun–spacecraft geometry for a multi-panel spacecraft, with per-panel MPPT, deployment state, angle-of-incidence effects, and eclipse …

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

Small Satellite Conference

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

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

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

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

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.

Autongc: One Small High-Fidelity Testbed, One Giant Leap For Autonomous Gn&C At The Moon, Sean Semper, Justin Clavette, Katherine Fowee Gasaway, Hossein Mohammadkhan, Nickalas Cason, Liam Greenlee, Joseph Patton, Grant Ryden, Behnam Azimi, Michael Romeo, Sun Hur Diaz

Small Satellite Conference

Objective:  

• Sustained human presence at Moon/Mars requires autonomous navigation  
• Reduce dependency on human-in-the-loop ground control  
• Enable onboard rapid GN&C in cislunar environment  
• Support multiple measurement types for robust navigation 

A Feasibility-Aware Attitude Trajectory Planner For Small Satellites, Patrick Mckeen, Niclas Scheuer, Kerri Cahoy

Small Satellite Conference

Spacecraft attitude control traditionally requires extensive per-mission engineering—hand-tuned gains, mission-specific mode logic, and conservative operating envelopes—that breaks down when on-orbit conditions deviate from ground assumptions. This is especially costly for small satellites, where limited ground support makes autonomous adaptability essential. We present a feasibility-aware attitude trajectory planner that replaces this hand-engineered stack with continuous planning from a digital twin: less a new feedback law than a different division of labor, in which the mode logic, gain tuning, and desaturation a conventional ADCS builds as separate pieces are instead absorbed into a single optimization.

Built on the ALTRO trajectory optimization algorithm, …

Shining A Spotlight On Maritime Dark Traffic, Alex Da Silva Curiel, Darren Jones, Rob Knight, Rupert Taylor, Leo Jofeh, Sir Martin Sweeting, Per Atle Våland, Simon Flack, Patrik Mandelin, Håkon Heier

Small Satellite Conference

The ability to support Maritime Domain Awareness from space using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been successfully demonstrated in the past, however practical challenges in achieving the necessary area coverage, temporal coverage and spatial resolution for a practical system has eluded wider adoption. Yet demand for Maritime Surveillance has increased in recent years, to protect important maritime energy and communications infrastructure, fisheries, and maritime reserves, and especially for maintaining national security and territorial integrity. A novel approach to the SAR payload design solves these challenges, and smallsat technologies have also matured to the point where a High-Resolution Wide-Swath (HRWS) system …

Small Satellite Launches From Japan: Zero Launch Vehicle And Hokkaido Spaceport, Atsuta Keiji, Masaki Fujii

Small Satellite Conference

INTEGRATED LAUNCH SYSTEM

• Easy access to factory in case of last minute iterations
• Simplified logistics
• Launch site is tailored made for ZERO

High-Torque Reaction Wheels For Agile Small Satellites, Thomas Brunsgaard, Matt Carton, Kearney Lackas

Small Satellite Conference

Blue Canyon Technologies has developed a high-torque reaction wheel (RW) product line to meet the growing attitude control demands of next-generation small spacecraft. As small satellites expand into missions requiring rapid retargeting and precise pointing, spacecraft agility is foundational to mission performance. More targets equal more data collection, translating to greater mission insight and revenue generation. 

This paper describes Blue Canyon’s approach to product line architecture that enabled rapid development and deployment of high-torque reaction wheels across multiple size classes. The high-torque variants deliver 0.5 Nm of torque, representing a 2X increase over standard configurations with 60% of the baseline …

Development Of Piezo Fast Steering Mirrors For Fso Inter-Satellite Communication, Frank Claeyssen, Arnaud Gilson, Thomas Maillard, David Ferris, Xavier De Lepine, Oliver Sosnicki, Jocelyn Rebufa, Clément Cote, Francis Bortolaso, Pascal Mexe

Small Satellite Conference

To allow faster communication between satellites, Radio Frequency (RF) links are being replaced by laser optical links, often called Free-Space Optical Communication (FSO). Each satellite embeds several optical communication terminals (OCT), each one needing two Fast Steering Mirrors (FSM) for laser beam fine and fast steering. Thus, for some giant constellations, the total number of FSM can reach up to 100 000 FSM. This New Space market induces not only technical challenges, such as good SWaP, but also industrial challenges, in particular reproducibility, cost-effectiveness and low cost of ownership vs Orbit segment. To address these various FSM needs, CEDRAT TECHNOLOGIES …

831sat: A Cubesat Subsystem Platform For Space Systems Development Education, Dominic S. Fucile, George Lordos, James Dingley, Kerri Cahoy, Paul Fucile

Small Satellite Conference

The CubeSat standard has become one of the most popular frameworks for co-curricular and extracurricular student satellite projects, yet its integration into formal curricula for space systems engineering remains limited.

Accessibility concerns:

• Students encountering satellite design for the first time face a learning curve when working with flight-representative hardware.
• Time constraints of undergraduate semesters limit the technical depth covered in a single course.
• Existing educational platforms often lack subsystem flexibility and fidelity needed to deliver an authentic systems engineering experience.

Presented is the 831Sat, a custom single board platform that provides core satellite subsystems:

• Central Processing Unit
• Electrical Power System …

Experimental Investigation Of "Structured Radio Wave" Propagation Using A Deployable Parabolic Reflector With A Uniform Circular Array, Makoto Ito, Tsukasa Funane, Yosuke Tanabe, Miki Yonehara, Hisatoshi Kimura, Keigo Nakamura, Yasuyuki Miyazaki, Satoshi Ikari, Shinichi Nakasuka, Ayako Torisaka, Koichi Watanabe

Small Satellite Conference

Poster presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

Advanced Avionics: Low Swap Hpsc Box For Space Autonomy, Behnam Azimi, Sun Hur-Diaz, Hossein Mohammadkhan, Michael Romeo, Sean Semper, Alan Cudmore

Small Satellite Conference

Objective: To provide a next-generation avionics system built on NASA's High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor technology.

Autonomous Onboard Navigation And Mission Planning In A Lunar Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit, Carl De Vries, Robert Pritchett, Sun Hur-Diaz, Nathan Esantsi, Liam Greenlee, Ben Leser, Mike Romeo

Small Satellite Conference

autoNGC is a core Flight System (CFS) application suite that performs real-time, onboard autonomous navigation, guidance and control (autoNGC)

Schott Options For Efficient Design-To-Cost Zerodur® Optical Assemblies With Established Supply Chain Reliability, Florian Gollier, Jesse Bonfeld, Dustin Ruth, Janina Krieg, Thomas Westerhoff, Tony Hull, Jacqueline Caraballo

Small Satellite Conference

Poster presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

4dof Steam Propulsion System For 1u Cubesats And Larger, David Hinkley, Jonathan Cheng, Susan Ossareh, Jeff Asher, Logan Fernandez, Brenda Valdez, Bhargav Nagarajan, Aryan Jafari, Stephen Samples

Small Satellite Conference

Aerospace developed a warm gas water vapor propulsion system for the OCSD-A mission in 2015 and redesigned it for the AeroCube-10 mission in 2019. Those were single nozzle systems. The 2019 mission performed reliably so this design is an evolution to 5 thrusters. Also new is that the main tank is additively manufactured aluminum so that tubing can be embedded and thermal management is easier.

Gigabit Ethernet Satellite Bus For Smallsat Applications: Standardizing Cots-Based High-Speed On-Board Data Communication, Lucas Felderhoff, Mathias Reibe

Small Satellite Conference

The satellite architectures of modern missions underline the increasing need to simplify and standardize on-board data buses. This requirement becomes more critical as missions demand higher data rates and greater flexibility.

Swap Optimized, Optical Communications Terminal Concepts For Lunar, Mars, Jupiter And Neptune Solar System Missions, Keith G. Petrillo, Mark Storm

Small Satellite Conference

Trinity: Fibertek's Lunar terminal

• Trinity provides a good basis for providing a low SWaP terminal for deep space communications
• Leveraging Trinity and high-power LiDAR lasers enables communications to 32AU
• Appropriate for deep space small satellites

Recap: A Study Of Downlink Optimization Methods Using Mms As A Template, Connor Firth, Conrad Schiff, Stephen Kreisler, Alexander Barrie

Small Satellite Conference

Motivations: MMS as a paradigm for downlink optimization

• MMS is a multi-agent mission requiring downlink optimization. ReCAP (Remote Coordination, Actuation, and Planning) assigns ground contacts using auctions.
• Five realistic downlink optimization cases are studied, and the amount of data downlinked is tracked to illustrate ReCAP’s ability to optimize for different criteria.
• ReCAP demonstrates value as a real-time, onboard downlink optimization tool.

Development Of The Korea's First Hyperspectral Microsatellite Constellation For Local-Scale Methane Monitoring: Narsha, Geuk-Nam Kim, Jinyoung Shin, Museong Park, Sang Hun Lee, Heewon Park, Taemin Kim, Jooin Lee, Dohyun Kim, Insun Jung, Marcin Badowski, Kiyun Park, Jae-Pil Park, Jaemin Hong, Yu-Ri Lee, Sujong Jeong, Alexandra Jercaianu, Pawel Snopek

Small Satellite Conference

Poster presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

Design And Implementation Of A Semi Automated Uhf Ground Station For Small Satellite Missions: A Case Study From India, Binoop Joseph, Vinayak Manoj, Thomas Francis, Madhav Vinod, Nikhil Jacob, Salih Majeed, Prajin I. R., Meghana Suresh, Salman Al Fariz K., Sijo George, Anish Chandra B. S., Anamika Kamath, Anjay Sudesh, Anurag Reghu, Aravind M. B., Manu Mohan, Ashfaque K. P., Amal Chandran

Small Satellite Conference

Mission success ultimately depends on reliable telecommand and telemetry links between spacecraft and Earth. For small satellites operating under tight power, size and link margin constraints, a technically robust and regulation compliant ground station is a mission critical enabler rather than an afterthought.

This poster presents a case study of a semi automated UHF ground station designed, built and commissioned by HEX20 in Thiruvananthapuram — one of the earliest privately owned and operated satellite ground stations in India — covering the hardware signal chain, the tracking and decoding software stack, integration and calibration, and the regulatory path to operation.

An Operator-In-The-Loop Smallsat Operations Simulation For Classroom Training, Samuil Nikolov, Kaelyn Tindall, Lana Laskey

Small Satellite Conference

Training spacecraft operators through a hybrid environment combining live telemetry, game-engine visualization, subsystem consoles, and real-time anomaly response.

An End-To-End Optical And Ethernet Networking Architecture For Next-Generation Satellite Constellations, Gianluca Giuffrida, Francesco Falaschi

Small Satellite Conference

• Modern satellites generate ever-increasing data volumes, increasingly challenging traditional RF links. IngeniArs combines very high speed optical links, up to 10 Gbps, with an onboard Ethernet routing fabric
• Optical data is packetized and dynamically routed for onboard storage or processing, or relayed across the constellation from satellite to satellite until it reaches an available ground station
• The result is reduced time-to-ground, increased contact opportunities, and more resilient end-to-end data delivery across the space and ground segments, despite intermittent link availability

Feasibility Of Failure-Resilient Swarm Formation Flying And Multi-Beam Coherent Apertures In 10000+ High-Density Satellite Swarms, Sumio Morioka

Small Satellite Conference

Direct-to-Device (D2D) communication links satellites directly to ground terminals without large antennas, supporting future Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and IoT. Our earlier work [1] showed that a formation of 10,000+ ultra-small satellites, as a coherent phased-array aperture, closes the D2D link budget. This study asks whether the formation can be operated within each satellite’s available power.

Validation Of A Modular Adcs Architecture For Small Satellites, Saish Sridharan

Small Satellite Conference

Poster Presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

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 …

Manufacturing Advances For Cost Effective, Large Aperture Monolithic Telescopes, T. Suratwala, R. Steele, G. Tham, J. Ross, J. Johnson, O. Herrera, M. Cahill, D. Bechtold, R. Bechtold, F. Ravizza, J. Cortes

Small Satellite Conference

Space has become increasingly more contested over the last decade, with the proliferation of satellites and space assets that require new levels of Space Domain Awareness (SDA). Space is often described by the US Government as the next warfighting domain. Control, understanding and dominance over this vast domain requires exquisite and complex optomechanical systems.

Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Space Science and Security Program (SSSP) has developed unique monolithic optics, which are ground-aligned during manufacturing and are nearly athermal. These qualities greatly reduce the complexity of the optical payload when compared to legacy telescope designs. Monolithic optics deliver excellent imaging capabilities, …