Abstract
The compact, standardised form factor of CubeSats allows for the use of commercial off-the-shelf components, reducing traditional barriers to entry, such as cost and development time. More than 1500 of these small spacecraft have been launched in the past 20 years, with improving capabilities that enable a wide range of mission profiles. The Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, is a CubeSat being developed by a student-led team with goals that span education, technology demonstration and science. A comprehensive mission test plan, in which in-flight conditions are simulated, has been developed for EIRSAT-1 and implemented using an engineering qualification model of the spacecraft. In addition to verifying 41 mission requirements, the successful execution of the mission test plan established that the full satellite system can perform the intended mission. Mission testing also proved to be an invaluable tool to prepare for launch and operations, providing the team with a more complete understanding of the satellite’s expected on-orbit behaviour. This work presents a detailed description of the mission test planning process and implementation, as well as key results and lessons learned. In doing so, this work aims to improve the on-orbit reliability of CubeSats by disseminating resources and good practice around mission testing.
Highlights
The capabilities of nanosatellites have been growing rapidly since the first CubeSats were launched in the early 2000s [1]
Over the 45 min (a 45 min wait period before activation of deployables is observed to satisfy mission requirements set by FYS!/launch authorities), the test support operators monitored the spacecraft to ensure that the antenna elements remained in their stowed positions, used a hand-held radio to confirm no radio frequency (RF) transmission was observed from the spacecraft, and monitored the on-board computer (OBC)’s debug output to confirm that all output from the flight software agreed with the observed conditions
Reviews of lessons learned by CubeSat teams with on-orbit experience highlight mission representative testing as a key method to improve the likelihood of mission success [15,57]
Summary
The capabilities of nanosatellites have been growing rapidly since the first CubeSats were launched in the early 2000s [1]. In addition to the fact that extensive flight heritage has been achieved only relatively recently, these failure rates can largely be attributed to the disruptive CubeSat design philosophy, where increased levels of risk are accepted to reduce a project’s cost (e.g., by using commercial-off-the-shelf components) and time-scale for implementation. The primary use of CubeSats as educational tools and for building capability at institutional or national levels [19], where expertise in satellite development may be limited, is a contributory factor as universityled projects are typically found to experience higher rates of failure compared to, for example, those from industry [14,20]. This work presents an in-depth account of the development and implementation of a mission test plan using EIRSAT-1 as a case study, providing resources and examples that are not widely available in the current literature. Project risk, significant resources have been invested into developing an extensive mission test plan for EIRSAT-1 [17]
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