Development of a 1U CubeSat As Part

of a 3x1U Constellation
Anthony DeFilippis
Marjan Ali
Dr. Kevin Shinpaugh
Dr. Jonathan Black
8/5/2017
Overview
• Introduction
• Overall Goals
• Student Experience
• Orbital Decay Measurements
• Local & Absolute Position Measurements
• Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
• Mission Development
• Hardware Description
• Future Work
• Summary
• Acknowledgements
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Introduction
• In 2015, four Virginian Universities proposed a mission to construct
three CubeSats for the state of Virginia
• Old Dominion University (ODU), Virginia Tech (VT), the University of Virginia
(UVA) and Hampton University (HU)
• ODU, VT, and UVA building CubeSats, HU providing post-mission
support & data analysis
• Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) & NASA funded
• Design & Construction of three 1U CubeSats starting in September
2016 for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) launch in May 2018
• Mission named the “Virginia CubeSat Constellation” (VCC)

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VCC Details – Overall Goals
1. Provide a hands-on, student-led flight project experience for
undergraduate students by designing, developing, integrating,
testing and flying an orbital constellation of three 1U CubeSats
2. Obtain measurements of the orbital decay of a constellation
of satellites to develop a database of atmospheric drag and the
variability of atmospheric properties
3. Evaluate and demonstrate a system to determine and
communicate relative and absolute spacecraft position across
an orbiting constellation

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VCC Goals – Student Experience
• For students, by students
• Around 25-30 students at the three main universities
• Each University has an independent design
• Common team structure
• Deadlines focused around design reviews held by NASA & the VSGC

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VCC Goals – Orbital Decay Measurements
• Rapidly increasing number of CubeSat flights require greater
necessity for orbital information
• LEO CubeSat orbits are often tough to predict accurately
• Increase publicly available information on CubeSat LEO orbits
• Keep models up-to-date
• Constellation lets us resolve “spatial-temporal ambiguity”
• Whether or not observed phenomena are spatial or temporal
events

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VCC Goals – Absolute & Relative Position
• Technological Demonstration
• Absolute position is taken from GPS
• Relative position is found by transmitting when a PPS signal
from the GPS is received
• Time of flight is recorded, and a distance is calculated
• Message contains GPS information of satellite for validation
• Completed using low-power inter-satellite radio

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Mission CONOPS
• NanoRacks deployment from ISS
• Operate for 2-4 weeks
• Collect science data during week
• Provide amateur radio service during
weekends
• Following this initial period, ODU-Sat
deploys drag brake mechanism
• Orbit rapidly decays
• Change of drag coefficient/profile
will provide more wholistic data
• Data gathering continues until
burnup

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VT CubeSat - Hardware
• Custom structure combining benefits of various
Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) systems
• Internal electronic systems designed for PC/104
stack
• Astrodev Lithium Li-1 Radio utilized for Satellite-to-
Ground link
• HopeRF RFM69HCW used for Satellite-to-Satellite
• EnduroSat UHF/UHF Antenna
• Texas Instruments MSP430 series microcontrollers
• SkyFox piNav-L1 GPS and piPatch-L1 GPS Antenna
• ClydeSpace Solar Panels & Battery

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VT CubeSat – Future Work
• Mission Readiness Review in September 2017
• Complete prototype by end of 2017
• All major notational components have been received
• Currently working on establishing sub-systems
• Running components through individual testing
• Finalizing PCB designs

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Summary
• Student-led 3x1U CubeSat Constellation
• LEO flight in May 2018
• Gather measurements of orbital decay as a constellation
• Demonstrate technology to find relative position in
constellation
• Combination of COTS / Custom hardware
• Currently at subsystem building level of design process

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Acknowledgements

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Acknowledgements