Hi.

Our team plans to launch a satellite into LEO (no orbit defined yet, I believe, at least no one told me) so I started wondering about potential effects due to radiation since we'd be designing our CubeSat mainly with COTS components. I searched online for some references on the radiation tolerance of some common devices (I was initially mainly worried about the microcontrollers) but couldn't find anything conclusive.

From what I could gather online (and posts on the subreddit), in terms of TID there isn't that much to worry about, since at LEO the total dose will generally be low and our mission duration isn't that high either (<1 year). It seems most electronic components can handle around ~5krad before they break (depending on the component obviously).

There's also SEUs and SELs that could potentially be damaging, but using a watchdog timer, ECC-memory and power cycling seems to be enough for protecting the MCU, as I understand it. However, I'm still unsure about the level of risk for other components.

If anyone has some advice on this or knows some good sources on the problem, I'd appreciate it if you could post them here.

Thanks.

Watch the live streaming of Libre Space Foundation's SIDLOC-PQ assembly, part of the ERMINAZ mission, scheduled to fly on top of RFA ONE of the Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) . The Libre Space Foundation is designing and developing open-source space technology.

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Where do you guys usually get data to use in Structural Analysis, such as vibration simulation, mechanical loads and Thermal Analysis, for example? I'm new to this Cubesat and Aerospace world, so I'm having trouble finding some informations to apply to the project we're developing in my university.

(sorry for the bad english, brazilian here)

Hello everyone.

I need a urgent help about the interpretation ITU’s frequency allocation. In the band 14.0-14.5GHz, the allowed service is called “mobile-satellite service”, that is defined in the attached screenshot. From the definition, focusing on the first bullet, it’s not fully clear to me in which cases a link between two “space stations” (that should be trivially the artificial satellites) is allowed. Could you please give me your interpretation? (please clarify if you are an expert in this topic or not)

Thank you very much! M

Hello, I am researching the topic of cubesat cameras for an exam at uni. I have been given a CMOS SENSOR, the Sony IMX342LLA data sheet here but I can not understand how should I look for an appropriate optic. What parameters should I look for? Do you have any helpful site I can look at? The idea is to have a camera with a ground sampling distance of 4 meters at 500km of altitude.
Thanks

Hey guys!

I am an undergraduate student in my first year of Aerospace Engineering.

Well, I joined my university at an excellent time to do some science. They called me on a transmitter project for a cubesat that will be in low orbit. The cubesat would likely be launched in 2029. The transmitter will be embedded in the cubesat and must transmit telemetry data

I'm looking for some circuits or platforms but I can't find anything that helps me scale this..

Hey i am trying to build a satellite. I am using raspberry pi to take photos and transmit it using sstv, I have seen people using dra818v module for transmission but due to my country i cannot find any way to buy it. Is there any alternative can i use the raspberry pi fm to transmit the signals?

What is the current launch cost for a 1U to SSO?

Hii people!
We are a small group of 10th grade students from high school and were looking forward to making a cubesat but couldn't really figure out much. It would be great if we could get an idea of how much will it cost us at the least for a small basic demonstration mission along with how to do the comms part at low price

If any resources are available. Please do share!

Thanks :)

how i can do it from start to finish ? what components I need ?how I can code it ?

Hello all,

Our project is currently moving towards a preliminary design, but I wanted to inquire about the need for a GPS receiver to accurately determine our orbit.

Our project is communications-based, probably SSO, and will uplink data from several low-power nodes and later downlink it to our groundstation. Our satellite will likely remain in nadir-pointing (<40 deg error) throughout its life, and has a polarized UHF antenna (hinking Endurosat UHF antenna). We will rely on NORAD tracking for our orbit estimate, and will use this to create timestamped data collection commands. This will be our best estmimate for when the CubeSat is located overhead of one of the nodes and may collect data from it.

Our nodes on the ground will likely use polarized UHF Yagi antennas, oriented straight up. The data that we need to transfer from a particular node is fairly small after compression, and should only take perhaps 10-30 seconds. Several of these nodes will be distributed over a wide geographical area. Should the system prove feasible, more may be distributed later on. We want to reduce power consumption of the nodes, so we would opt for a high gain antenna and low-power power amplifier (or none at all if feasible).

Consider the radiation patterns of yagi uplink antennas and the CubeSat antennas, the time for data uplink, and the error introduced by relying on NORAD tracking data for our estimate of when we are overhead. My question is: does it seem feasible to forgoe a GPS receiver in this scenario? My initial thoughts are that it should be fine... NORAD error is relatively low and the antenna beamwidths are wide. We'll be taking a more in-depth look into this once we reach that stage, but I wanted to get some opinions from anyone who may have experience with this type of project. I also know dealing with unlocked GPS receivers is a pain, hence I would like to avoid it if possible.

If anyone has insight on this it would be appreciated! I would be happy to provide any more details on the project.

Hello,

Any Redditors here who've bought or worked with Endurosats 1U Platform?

hello! I’m new to the cubesat world and starting to get obsessed with the idea of building my own. Do you know of any library with existing cubesat designs? For now, my goal is to mount a sensor (or two?) for astronomical observations, and ideally no larger than 3U. Think it would be useful to look at existing designs.

Hi! I am looking for advice on COTS solar cells and OBC.

I am studying space engineering and with my class, we're designing a PocketQube. It's a 3P with a radiation camera as the payload. The payload fits into 2P (80 x 21 x 14 mm) and requires 2.75W when on. It does not need any surface so we have pretty much all 6 sides available for the solar panels. With KXOB25-14X1F-TR solar cells we were planning to use, we estimated that the power we can draw from the long side of the PocketQube is roughly 1W in the best case if we go without ADCS and let it tumble (the camera doesn't care). To make it work, we want to develop somewhat sophisticated duty cycling. We would be orbiting in standby mode and accumulating energy until the batteries are full, then acquire as many images as we can. Once we're over the ground station, we would downlink the data and repeat the entire cycle.

The payload provider is asking for an OBC that can run Linux so they can set up pre-processing and some optimizations that would reduce power consumption and data volume for downlinking. We considered NanoPi NEO, Raspberry Pi Zero, and Orange Pi Zero LTS but it seems like all of them would consume around 0.5W in a standby mode and go up to 2-3W during processing. We're at the point when we're ready to admit that a PocketQube is just not a good fit for the job (without pointing and deployable solar panels) but we would like to give it a last shot. So I am on the lookout for the most power-efficient SBC that can run Linux and COTS solar cells that could give us a bit more juice.

I would very much appreciate your recommendations or just a cheer up :)

Thank you in advance

Hello I’m looking for transceivers specific for space applications (nano satellites, cubesat) with an achievable data rate higher than 100Mbps and of course I’m also looking for a reasonable power consumption.

Thank you very much!

I am involved in a CubeSat team that will fly a mission in low earth orbit. I will be working on ADCS so would like to gain experience with the magnetometer. I am just not sure which one to buy. Is there a reliable standard magnetometer that people use for low earth orbit? My understanding is that fluxgate are the norm but I see a large range of prices and not sure which to buy. If anyone has a specific one they like that is also affordable, I'm all ears.

Hello! I’m a student on a college cubesat team and we’ve run into an issue with planning our downlinking for our satellite. When doing our calculations on how long our satellite would take to downlink a photo, we found it would supposedly take us a month to downlink one image. With this not being a feasible plan, how could we speed up this downlink process? Currently we’re planning on using S-band, and my thought is that maybe we’re looking at finding ground stations or downlinking images wrong.

Hello has anyone ever used Bright Ascension FSDK? If yes what's your opinion about it and if you would rather use another FS after your experience with FSDK.

We got an inquiry from a company in the cubesat industry.

I don't know any astrophysicists myself, so I thought I'd give online communities a try:)

If you know anything about mmWave transponders/receivers/transmitters and would like to make a small impact in this field, please dm me. If you have Discord, even better!

I want to use a Pi zero as the OBC for a cubesat that goes to LEO (400-500km). The mission will last for a few weeks at most. It has to provide active temperature control, take some measurements, and handle comms that's all. It's not very compute intensive.

We were initially planning to use an atmegas128(it's radhard. But expensive).

Do I have to worry about radiation effects?

Do we need a radhard microcontroller at this altitude?

I am of the opinion that having an OS will make the task much easier, but some of my colleagues seem to think that the OS would be bulky and get in the way.

I did my own research but I would like others' opinions as well. Thankyou

Hi, so I'm looking for altimeters I can use for a cubesat mission. I need to find an altimeter that goes up to max 100,000ft. Please give me some options!

I'm a poet and I'm looking to launch a tiny book into space.

I had been considering a Moonbox (https://www.astrobotic.com/lunar-delivery/send-to-the-moon/) but I'm setting my sights a little lower.

The book is about the size and weight of an M&M.

I came across AmbaSat this evening (https://ambasat.com/shop/) but am wondering if there are other affordable options for rocketsharing.

Thanks for any ideas you may have!

Hi!

I'm looking for small sized servo actuators to move a deployable boom-arm into certain positions throughout our mission. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything helpful yet. Does anyone know any sources where one could find helpful information/products?

Thanks!

We are looking for individuals or a team that could help us with this project. We're planning a small satellite project aimed at capturing high-resolution images with a ground sample distance (GSD) of 1 meter or less.

Thanks in advance!

I've been doing some reading online on how some students started a University Cubeset Project. Can any of those students give some tips on how they kickstarted their university project?