Abstract
OPS-SAT is an ESA nanosatellite launched in December 2019. The spacecraft is open for third-party experiments, which can use almost all functions provided by the spacecraft and take full control of it. Depending on the experiment and usage of the payload, the power consumption of the spacecraft may be as small as a few watts but can exceed 30 W at full load. The peak power production lies in the same order of magnitude, which is highly demanding for thermal regulation. This article describes the preparation and execution of the OPS-SAT Thermal Vacuum (TVAC) test campaign and discusses the limitations and restrictions that had to be taken into account, such as technical limitations with respect to mounting the spacecraft inside the TVAC chamber. Additionally, the procedure of identifying a comprehensive test scenario is discussed. The general approach of TVAC tests and the results of one full test cycle are presented, and the key findings are discussed. The goal is to address the problems and limitations that were encountered during the TVAC test campaign and to provide some ideas and suggestions for improvement for the future.
Highlights
OPS-SAT is an ESA 3U Cubesat, built by Graz University of Technology (TUG) and serves the purpose of breaking the “has never flown – will never fly” cycle, by providing a powerful experimentation platform in space [1]
It is not feasible to account for all possible experimental scenarios on OPS-SAT and a single, representative use case had to be chosen for the Thermal Vacuum (TVAC) test campaign
The OPS-SAT battery acts as temperature reference point Temperature Reference Point (TRP) and the temperatures are shown for the SEPP (TP1), the S-Band transceiver (TP2), the Optical receiver (TP3) and the thermal chamber shroud [3]
Summary
OPS-SAT is an ESA 3U Cubesat, built by Graz University of Technology (TUG) and serves the purpose of breaking the “has never flown – will never fly” cycle, by providing a powerful experimentation platform in space [1]. This leads to a large combination of different use cases, each of which with individual requirements in terms of power and resulting thermal behaviour. The umbilical harness is limited to a current of 1 A at 8 V, which means that the chose use case will drain the battery eventually No radio transmission Both UHF and S-Band transmitter had to be switched off, to avoid damaging the respective receiver units due to reflections inside the TVAC chamber, that would exceed the maximum allowed input power of the receivers. Test phases One OPS-SAT TVAC test cycle can subdivided to seven distinct phases, that are briefly describe in the following list:
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