Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Thermal Analysis Of Small Satellites, Devansh Patel

Small Satellite Conference

Accurate thermal modeling is essential to spacecraft design, ensuring components remain within operational temperatures throughout orbit. This study develops and validates thermal models of increasing complexity to gain practical experience in spacecraft thermal analysis.

The GRIFEX mission is a 3U CubeSat launched in a 634 km circular polar orbit by the Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL). The CubeSat observed both 90° and 0° beta angle orbits during its mission, making it optimal for comparing thermal analysis results for small satellites in low Earth orbit.

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.

Using Ai And Photometry To Locate And Characterize Exoplanets For Small Satellites, Ella Vosburg, Herb Hess, Christine Page

Small Satellite Conference

This poster reports a theoretical design of a spectrometer and deformable mirrors on a CubeSat, coding for preprocessing of data, and how an AI model will be used in postprocessing with Jupiter and its moons as a test case.

Searching for and characterizing exoplanets has driven the design and execution of many observational space missions, as demonstrated by several well-known large telescopes. However, some challenges to expanding our knowledge of the universe remain, including competitive observation times and high cost. This leads to the incumbent methods of using archival transit and spectroscopic data.

Smaller satellites have an advantage on these …

Software For The Alpha Cubesat Mission: System Architecture, Development, And Testing Behind Successful Flight Operations, Eric Zhang, Jonathan Ma, Joshua Umansky-Castro, Lauren Greenhill, Duncan Mcdonald, Damian Hackett, Maria Boza, Cameron Goddard

Small Satellite Conference

Alpha CubeSat is a 1U CubeSat designed, built, and operated by a student-led team at Cornell University. Its primary mission is to deploy a free-flying lightsail in low Earth orbit, carrying gram-scale "ChipSat" flight computers as a demonstration of low-cost distributed sensing in space. The spacecraft was built around commercial, off-the-shelf hardware, including a Teensy 3.5 microcontroller as the primary flight computer and a RockBLOCK Iridium modem for communication, and was developed and flown under the constraints that define a student program: a small power budget, a rotating team, limited development time, and an intermittent operations radio link. The CubeSat …

Generalized Attitude Control For Small Spacecraft, Patrick Mckeen, Niclas Scheuer, Kerri Cahoy

Small Satellite Conference

Published controllers are derived for one actuator set, pointing goal, orbit, and disturbance model. Porting one means reproducing the paper, validating the implementation, then changing hardware and mission assumptions together.

Concept Of Operation Logic And Implementation Expectations For Multimode Propulsion Technology Demonstration Missions, Logan Thompson, Michael Harrigan, Theresa Sandborn, Victoria Coverstone, Joshua L. Rovey

Small Satellite Conference

Traditional single-mode propulsion systems are typically optimized for either high-thrust, short-duration maneuvers (chemical propulsion) or high-efficiency, low-thrust operations (electric propulsion). For CubeSats, which are limited by mass, volume, power, and system complexity, carrying separate propulsion systems for each mission phase is often impractical. Multimode propulsion systems overcome this limitation by combining chemical and electric propulsion within a shared architecture, allowing a single spacecraft to perform both rapid maneuvers and efficient long-duration orbit maintenance.

Demonstrating a multimode propulsion system requires more than operating two propulsion modes on the same spacecraft. Shared propellant, feed systems, thermal interactions, power usage, and transitions …

Ice Giant Watch Dog: Cubesat Concept To Monitor Weather On Neptune, Isabela Huckabee, Don Banfield, Nikole Lewis, Elijah Mullens, Abby Boehm

Small Satellite Conference

Why Neptune?

Neptune hosts one of the most dynamic weather systems in the solar system, yet it hasn't been closely observed since the Voyager-2 flyby. Existing observing programs [1,2] are too infrequent to capture the day-to-week timescales on which storms and clouds evolve, but a dedicated CubeSat could fill this gap.

The current project has two goals:

1. Explore the photometric precisions achievable by a CubeSat platform
2. Determine whether the presence of clouds will be detectable by a CubeSat platform

Lighting Up The Moon: A Scheduling Framework For Cislunar Space Based Solar Power Orchestration, Vaibhav Bhosale, Andrew Woo, Ada Gavrilovska, Christopher R. Valenta, Ketan Bhardwaj

Small Satellite Conference

Surviving the Lunar Night

• 14 Earth day lunar nights
• More batteries, more mass, higher cost

Sierasat: A 6u Cubesat Platform For Space-Based Solar Power, Sutharsan Indrakumar, Ahmed Guller, Leann Cwieka, Justin Parry, Minh Nguyen, Kaegan Lucas, Carson Bove, Chaitra Nulu, Myles Thomas, Sophia Jones, Deepak R. Mishra

Small Satellite Conference

Reliance on fossil fuels, combined with the physical limits of ground-based solar arrays, makes a strong case for collecting solar energy in orbit. Earth intercepts roughly 1.4 kW/m² at the top of the atmosphere, but absorption by carbon dioxide and water vapour and atmospheric scattering cut peak surface intensity to about 1.1 kW/m², this results in an over a 20% reduction. While inclination, time of day, and weather restrict that to a narrow band of land for a few hours each day.

The Solar Incident Energy Relay Array (SIERA) is a proposed mission that will create a single 6U CubeSat …

Ground-Based Magnetic Attitude Determination For Low-Cost Cubesat Missions, Johnny Mccaskill, Evan Jellison, Jackson Holden, Blagoy Rangelov

Small Satellite Conference

Spacecraft Attitude Determination

Attitude is the orientation of a spacecraft relative to an inertial or Earth-fixed frame and is essential for:

• Communication alignment

• Payload pointing

• Stable spacecraft control

Existing Methods & Limitations

Traditional attitude determination systems use multiple sensors, including:

• Star trackers (high accuracy)

• Gyroscopes (rate tracking, drift-prone)

• Sun sensors and magnetometers (coarse estimates)

These systems are typically combined through sensor fusion to achieve high precision. However, they introduce significant challenges for CubeSats:

• High cost and power consumption

• Increased system complexity

• Larger mass and integration requirements

Proposed Approach

This work explores …

Long-Term Software-Defined Formation Flying And Its Application To Space Mimo Communications, Takaya Inamori, Keita Tanaka, Kiyoshi Kinefuchi, Shigeru Sunada, Yousuke Kawabata, Ayumu Nono, Takumi Noro, Yukihisa Otani, Norihide Miyamura, Eiji Okamoto, Yuma Abe, Yoshimi Fujii, Hiroyuki Tsuji, Takuya Okura, Rei Kawashima, Takuto Ogawa, Tomoyuki Miyashita

Small Satellite Conference

Formation flying of multiple small satellites is expected to enable novel space missions that cannot be achieved by a single satellite. Small sized satellites are strongly affected by environmental disturbances and have strict constraints on mass, volume, and power. This study focuses on characteristics that become prominent as satellites are miniaturized, such as the increased influence of space environment and enhanced interactions among onboard components. By utilizing these effects, the research aims to realize propellant-less, software-defined formation flying. The proposed technologies are applied to space MIMO (multiple input multiple output) communications, in which communication capacity is improved by controlling the …

Toward Trainable Ai Agents For Satellite Operations, Haley Calderon, Vaibhav Bhosale, Ketan Bhardwaj, Ada Gavrilovska

Small Satellite Conference

Low Earth orbit is increasingly crowded, and a growing share of it is flown by universities and small operators. These teams must detect and respond to on-orbit anomalies with far less staff, expertise, and tooling than large operators, and a single missed anomaly can end a mission. We present COMET, a ground-based operator agent that helps a small team both detect anomalies and diagnose them. COMET pairs a learned detector with a retrieval-augmented diagnosis stage. An LSTM autoencoder flags anomalous telemetry windows, and a language model explains each one against the mission’s own documentation, procedures, and prior operational records. Because …

Pulse-Q: Space-To-Ground Quantum Key Distribution At The Cubesat Form Factor, Logan Hanssler, Stewart Kristiansen, Ellisian King, Neha Chandran, Unnathi Venkatesh, Selina Gao, Nelson Chan, Mika Sadikario, Joseph Sorel, Lexi Liu, Eleanor Gentry, Rohan Gupta, Juan Ignacio Prieto Asbun, Lauren Ayala, Vincent Redwine, Tian Zhong

Small Satellite Conference

Motivation 

• Quantum key distribution (QKD) offers provably secure communication regardless of the technology available to potential eavesdroppers.
• Space-to-ground QKD facilitates long-distance key distribution without costly terrestrial infrastructure.
• The Polarization-modUlated Laser Satellite Experiment – Quantum (PULSE-Q) is a 12U CubeSat mission to leverage recent innovations in compact quantum sources and optical communication to achieve space-to-ground QKD.

Rapid Integration Of A Secondary Communications Subsystem On Aggiesat6, Alex B. Halbesleben, John F. Connolly

Small Satellite Conference

AggieSat Laboratory (AGSL) is a student-run space program that trains students in systems engineering through hands-on experience in the design, building, testing, and operation of space and space-related systems

AGSL is currently comprised of 107 students, most of whom are undergraduates. Its members work on eight active projects (including a shadow program for underclassmen).

AGSL has demonstrated flight heritage with the deployments of AggieSat2, AggieSat4, and AggieSat6.

The Base Got Hit: Interpersonal Communication Strategies In High-Stress Space Projects, Allison E. Barnes, Avery G. Barriga, John F. Connolly

Small Satellite Conference

The AggieSat Laboratory (AGSL) is a student-driven laboratory with 17 years of space systems experience and flight heritage. As AGSL prepares to launch several space systems over the next three years, reflecting on lessons learned from past projects is critical to improving future reliability and execution. This survey analyzes communication dynamics in past CubeSat and ISS payload projects, specifically within the high-stress phases of Assembly, Integration, and Test (AI&T) and Mission Operations, where a combination of young engineers and high-stakes decision-making can often lead to compounding, avoidable technical anomalies.

This survey identifies specific interpersonal strategies to mitigate human error, including …

Vision-Based Pose Estimation Of A Low-Inertia Robotic Capture Arm, Dane Groves, Willem Jordaan

Small Satellite Conference

The development of CubeSat-integrated robotic arms has expanded the possibilities for In-Orbit Assembly, Repair, and Servicing (OARS). A low-inertia robotic capture arm has been designed previously using remote actuation¹. In the context of CubeSats, this allows heavy actuators to be placed in the base of the CubeSat and lightweight, slender links can be connected to form an arm. This design, depicted in Figure 1, allows for a robotic arm with a low moment of inertia.

The limited 6.5 mm link profile prevents the integration of high-resolution joint encoders, motivating the use of an alternative state estimation technique. This …

Processor And Sensor Interfacing On Fpga For Stp-H12-Vantage Space Mission, Christopher Brubaker, Alan D. George

Small Satellite Conference

Previous SHREC Missions

• STP-H5-CSP – Demonstration of CSP and hybrid COTS + rad-hard architecture
• STP-H6-SSIVP – Parallel and distributed computing with multiple CSPs
• STP-H7-CASPR – Onboard processing with next-gen sensors and apps

STP-H12-VANTAGE

• Visual And Neuromorphic Tracking And Geosensing Experiment
• Correlation of neuromorphic and visual sensor data
• Advancing usage of COTS SoMs supplemented with rad-hard monitoring and watchdog circuitry

Squidsat: A Modular, Open-Source 3u Cubesat Bus For Low-Cost Cubesat Missions, Aaron Bournias, Joseph Dukowitz, Mark Jaber, Tyler Field, Micah Nguyen, Koowum Joshi, Noah Campos, Daphne Riordan, Ryan La Ra, Jonathan Luse, Joshua Sink, Tyler Nielsen, Ricardo Ontivaros, Michael Goryll, Joe Dubois

Small Satellite Conference

CubeSat launches continue to increase yearly, yet over 51% of missions from 2002–2016 failed. Primary faults were often due to power, mechanical, or design issues. Costs still remain high in a market driven by expensive flight-heritage hardware with proprietary designs. In order to counteract such costly practice, Sun Devil Satellite Lab (SDSL) at ASU has developed an open-source, modular 3U CubeSat bus built for low cost reliability. Unlike other bus architectures, SquidSat distributes control across independent microcontrollers linked via a CAN bus. CAN is commanded by the OBC but is capable of independent operation for fault isolation and easier testing. …

Onboard Ai At The Orbital Edge: A Mission Debrief From Stp-H7-Caspr, Evan W. Gretok, Linus Silbernagel, Diego Wildenstein, Michael J. Cannizzaro, Seth Roffe, Alan D. George

Small Satellite Conference

Goals: Enable autonomous Earth observation and onboard sensor data processing with novel compute

Motivations: Growing numbers of spacecraft demand autonomy in operation and data collection

Challenges: Harsh radiation and thermal environment of space over four-year mission lifetime

A Comparative Analysis Of Radio Frequency And Optical Inter-Satellite Link Communications For Leo Mega-Constellations, Alexa Houck, Suryansh Aryan, Kevin Schroeder, Samantha Kenyon

Small Satellite Conference

SpaceNet design  

Software-based testbed for simulating large satellite networks, specifically LEO-based constellations to analyze network behavior, connectivity, routing, and overall communication.  

• Phase one focuses on connectivity and routing: Given the topology and link availability over time, how does my network behave? 
• Phase two focuses on network emulation: Given the topology and link availability over time, how does my network behave? 

Arcsecond-Level Pointing Accuracy In A Cubesat: Development And Verification Of The High-Precision Pointing System For The Cubespec Mission, Leonardo Peri

Small Satellite Conference

Mission and objectives 

CubeSpec is a 12U CubeSat mission designed to demonstrate high-resolution stellar spectroscopy from a small, low-cost space platform. 

Its scientific objectives require the payload line-of-sight to remain stable within a few arcseconds. This is beyond the capability of conventional CubeSat Attitude Determination & Control Systems (ADCS). 

To meet this challenge, CubeSpec uses a dual-stage pointing architecture: the spacecraft ADCS provides coarse body pointing, while a High-Precision Pointing Platform applies fast, precise corrections directly to the payload line-of-sight.

Snack Protocol For Reliable High-Throughput Data Transfer On Mtu-Constrained Low-Cost Uhf Radios, Samantha Mallari, Dennis Sarsozo, Miguel Nunes

Small Satellite Conference

• Student CubeSat missions using sub-$100 UHF radios are constrained by small packet sizes, making standard protocols (e.g., TCP, CFDP) too overhead-intensive for payload downlinks.  
• We developed a Selective Negative Acknowledgement (SNACK)-based protocol for the Artemis CubeSat Kit bus to support reliable 160 × 120 LWIR thermal image transmission for the CubeSats for Climate Change Monitoring (C3M) mission  
• A 45-byte SNACK bitmap acknowledges up to 360 packet fragments, minimizing retransmission overhead.  
• Field tests from 5 m to 1.6 km achieved 72.2 kbps peak throughput and ≥98.7% final data integrity.

Austronauts 3u Cubesat Space Weather Payloads Proposal, Tiana Pendray

Small Satellite Conference

CubeSats are becoming increasingly prominent due to their accessibility, affordability and versatility. An emerging field of satellite application is the monitoring of ionospheric space weather, made possible by sensitive instruments that collect data on plasma potential, temperature and ion density. These parameters vary due to changing solar activity in the form of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and solar flares, which can have severe impacts on satellite navigation systems, radio communication networks and orbital estimations. The AUStronauts team at the University of New South Wales is developing a 3U CubeSat with two space weather payloads – an Electrodynamic Tether (EDT) and …

Autonomous Microelectronics See Payload For Validating Terrestrial Predictions In Space, Michael A. Blacconiere, Isaac Hudson, John W. Burgoon, Terrance Sacks, Spencer Westfall, Sajal Islam, Davidson Juhke, George Randel, Jared Harvey, Merek Chertkow, Daniel Loveless

Small Satellite Conference

The radiation environment in space is complex and time-varying, causing major risks for microelectronic applications. Terrestrial radiation sources are used to characterize devices before missions to predict in-orbit error rates. However, these predictions are rarely validated in deployment. The payload, designed by IU CREATE and The Radiation Team, the IUB-SAT-1, integrates IU’s RadFX-IC and commercial SRAMs with well-characterized terrestrial radiation responses into a modular payload to collect on-orbit radiation-response data. Results will refine radiation error-rate models and improves confidence in deploying advanced microelectronics to radiation-rich space environments.

Bit-Flip Sensitivity And Selective Fp32 Protection For Onboard Neural Networks In Flight Software: In-Place Secded Healing Of An Fp32 Weight Buffer Inside Nasa Cfs, Ryan Goodman, Carson Cramer, Braden Eichmeier, Emily Gerber, Christopher Roscoe

Small Satellite Conference

Smallsat missions increasingly deploy neural networks on COTS processors. In orbit, a charged particle striking such a device can flip a single bit of memory, a single event upset (SEU). An upset in a network weight raises no fault condition: the network continues to run, returns incorrect values, and the control loop downstream acts on them. 

The standard cFS response to memory corruption is process restart, which interrupts service and discards runtime state.

Development And Validation Of An Operator-Friendly Flight Dynamics System For High-Precision Leo Nanosatellite Operations, K. W. Cheong, M. C. Kim, P. R. Kim, M. G. Kim, J. Y. Yu, G. H. Ju

Small Satellite Conference

A ground-based Flight Dynamics System (FDS) provides essential orbit information for satellite monitoring and mission planning. This study develops a Python-based integrated FDS that processes GPS observations, TLEs, and ephemerides through interconnected orbit determination, orbit propagation, and event prediction modules. The developed system combines Batch Least Squares orbit determination, HPOP/SGP4 propagation, covariance analysis, and nodal-crossing prediction within a consistent time and coordinate framework. 

The objective is to establish and validate an integrated workflow that generates reliable orbit states, future ephemerides, uncertainty information, and operational event products for CubeSat ground operations 

Experimental Assessment Of A 15-N Nitrous Oxide And Ethane Thruster For Premixed And Non-Premixed Operations, Eunwoo Jung, Juwon Kim, Eunkwang Lee, Keunseok Lee, Yonggu Kim, Minwoo Lee

Small Satellite Conference

• Nitrous Oxide (N₂O) has attracted significant attention as an oxidizer for next-generation small scale propulsion systems due to its non-toxic and high vapor pressure, which enables self-pressurization.  
• By combining N₂O with hydrocarbon fuels, propulsion systems can be operated either as bipropellant systems or as premixed propulsion systems.  
• N₂O-based premixed propellants, commonly known as NOFB (Nitrous Oxide Fuel Blend), require only a single propellant tank, similar to monopropellant systems, resulting in a simplified system architecture; however, their high susceptibility to flashback necessitates the incorporation of dedicated flashback prevention devices.  
• The objective of this study is …

Functional Analysis Of Raspberry Pi Rp-Series Microcontrollers Using High-Dose Gamma Radiation For Low-Cost Cubesats, Tyler Nielsen, Aaron Bournias, Joe Dubois

Small Satellite Conference

Radiation testing of non-rad hard microcontrollers is crucial for low-cost CubeSats, allowing teams to avoid the prohibitive cost of radiation-hardened systems while still selecting microcontrollers that will survive in the irradiated environment of space.

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 …

Lessons Learned From The Hyvrid 3u Cubesat Development, Kim Jee Hoon

Small Satellite Conference

Space Object Surveillance System 

• Hanwha Systems’ Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) uses the turnaround time of laser emitted from the ground to measure precise distance of satellites or space objects.  
• It is also capable of precise orbit prediction and active response by utilizing high-energy laser. 

Verification Satellite

• CubeSat HYVRID is made to operate as a target satellite of the NGSLR system, verifying the laser ranging, precise orbit prediction, and active response technology.
  • GPS raw data
  • laser detection data
  • images captured before-and-after active response