Josh Berk

The open prototype for educational NanoSats: Fixing the other side of the small satellite cost equation

Government supported nano-satellite launch programs and emerging commercial small satellite launch services are reducing the cost of access to space for educational and other CubeSat projects. The cost and complexity of designing and building these satellites remains a vexing complication for many would be CubeSat aspirants. The Open Prototype for Educational NanoSats (OPEN), a proposed nano-satellite development platform, is described in this paper. OPEN endeavors to reduce the costs and risks associated with educational, government and commercial nano-satellite development. OPEN provides free and publicly available plans for building, testing and operating a versatile, low-cost satellite, based on the standardized CubeSat form-factor. OPEN consists of public-domain educational reference plans, complete with engineering schematics, CAD files, construction and test instructions as well as ancillary reference materials relevant to satellite building and operation. By making the plan, to produce a small but capable spacecraft freely available, OPEN seeks to lower the barriers to access on the other side (non-launch costs) of the satellite cost equation.

A Curriculum-Integrated Small Spacecraft Program for Interdisciplinary Education

Space generates inspiration, aspiration, and passion in many students, traits that are often lacking in the traditional college classroom. By utilizing a meaningful space project with a tangible product, which serves a valuable purpose in the curriculum, instructors can generate passion in their students with regards to the topics being explored. Additionally, it can fuel interest in aerospace science and commerce, guiding more students towards valuable STEM degrees and job opportunities, which can lead to future growth and fresh blood in the aging aerospace employee pool. OpenOrbiter is a student-run research project at the University of North Dakota that can serve as a basis for developing this type of integrated interdisciplinary education. To date, it has involved over 200 students. When the design specifications, called the Open Prototype for Educational NanoSats (OPEN), are published, a cross-departmental effort towards building a CubeSat for as little as

Above the cloud computing: applying cloud computing principles to create an orbital services model

5,000 (payload excluded) in parts cost is possible. This cross-departmental effort can span across both undergraduate and graduate programs and include a large number of college departments. The professors in these departments can create suitable projects that involve the small spacecraft in their curriculum. This paper evaluates both qualitative and quantitative benefits that this type of integrated approach has in fostering interest in STEM degrees, increasing students’ enthusiasm for class materials.

Orbiter: An Interdisciplinary, Student Run Space Program

Large satellites and exquisite planetary missions are generally self-contained. They have, onboard, all of the computational, communications and other capabilities required to perform their designated functions. Because of this, the satellite or spacecraft carries hardware that may be utilized only a fraction of the time; however, the full cost of development and launch are still bone by the program. Small satellites do not have this luxury. Due to mass and volume constraints, they cannot afford to carry numerous pieces of barely utilized equipment or large antennas. This paper proposes a cloud-computing model for exposing satellite services in an orbital environment. Under this approach, each satellite with available capabilities broadcasts a service description for each service that it can provide (e.g., general computing capacity, DSP capabilities, specialized sensing capabilities, transmission capabilities, etc.) and its orbital elements. Consumer spacecraft retain a cache of service providers and select one utilizing decision making heuristics (e.g., suitability of performance, opportunity to transmit instructions and receive results – based on the orbits of the two craft). The two craft negotiate service provisioning (e.g., when the service can be available and for how long) based on the operating rules prioritizing use of (and allowing access to) the service on the service provider craft, based on the credentials of the consumer. Service description, negotiation and sample service performance protocols are presented. The required components of each consumer or provider spacecraft are reviewed. These include fully autonomous control capabilities (for provider craft), a lightweight orbit determination routine (to determine when consumer and provider craft can see each other and, possibly, pointing requirements for craft with directional antennas) and an authentication and resource utilization priority-based access decision making subsystem (for provider craft). Two prospective uses for the proposed system are presented: Earth-orbiting applications and planetary science applications. A mission scenario is presented for both uses to illustrate system functionality and operation. The performance of the proposed system is compared to traditional self-contained spacecraft performance, both in terms of task performance (e.g., how well / quickly / etc. was a given task performed) and task performance as a function of cost. The integration of the proposed service provider model is compared to other control architectures for satellites including traditional scripted control, top-down multi-tier autonomy and bottom-up multi-tier autonomy.