Abstract
Miniaturized propulsion systems can enable many future CubeSats missions. The advancement of the Technology Readiness Level of this technology passes through the integration in a CubeSat platform and the assessment of the impact and the interactions of the propulsion systems on the actual CubeSat technology and vice versa. The request of power, the thermal environmental, and the electromagnetic emissions generated inside the platform require careful analyses. This paper presents the upgraded design and the validation of a CubeSat test platform (CTP) that can interface a wide range of new miniaturized propulsion systems and gather unprecedented information for these analyses, which can be fused with the commonly used ground support equipment. The CTP features are reported, and the main achievements of the tests are shown, demonstrating the effective capabilities of the platform and how it allows for the investigation of the mutual interactions at system level between propulsion systems and the CubeSat technology.
Highlights
Nano satellites represent an emerging opportunity to pursue a broad set of mission goals, including science and space exploration [1,2], technology demonstration [3,4], debris removal [5], Earth Observation [6], and communications [7] at low cost and fast delivery
In this framework, miniaturized propulsion systems greatly increase the range of mission concept achievable with multi-unit CubeSats (6U+) in terms of orbit change and raising, station keeping, and orbit maintenance against the disturbances, formation flying, proximity operations, and de-orbit [9,10,11,12], but many systems still remain at a low technology readiness level because they are never integrated with a CubeSat platform
The present paper deals with the description of the updated CubeSat test platform, providing details thePlatform adopted solutions results obtained during CubeSat the test campaigns conducted in
Summary
Nano satellites represent an emerging opportunity to pursue a broad set of mission goals, including science and space exploration [1,2], technology demonstration [3,4], debris removal [5], Earth Observation [6], and communications [7] at low cost and fast delivery. The assessment of the mutual impact between the miniaturized electric propulsion system and the CubeSat technology becomes a stepping stone to speed up the propulsion system availability because it allows a confirmation of the operativity and the performance obtained at subsystem level and/or anticipate potential misbehaviors and gives advice to the propulsion systems and platforms developers as well as launch providers on the required improvements. This second aspect is one of the focal points of the research, in that it does not aim at verifying performance requirements (e.g., the thrust) and focuses on investigating as deeply as possible the issues deriving from the mutual impact between the onboard systems. The present paper deals with the description of the updated CubeSat test platform, providing details thePlatform adopted solutions results obtained during CubeSat the test campaigns conducted in
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