Abstract
Abstract. CubeSats as a sub-class of nanosatellites have become a game-changer in the industry of scientific research and exploration of the new space technologies. Their cost effectiveness, relative ease of manufacturing, and predicted lifecycle are the main factors of success, leading to roughly 2280 nanosatellites being put on the Earth’s LEO. However, many issues still arise in regard to the effective development, testing, and successful mission control of the CubeSats. The authors of the article suggest the combination of well-known software development processes, design paradigms, patterns, and techniques, that are creating a new way of making CubeSat software development as flexible and as easy as possible. The very first part of the research suggests the outlook on modern software development processes and their evolution over the last years. The second part of the research looks into virtualization and containerization principles as the architectural response to complex software development. The third and fourth parts of the research concentrated on the selection and proper testing of the container execution engine and its performance with the most common algorithm used in embedded software development. Via the porting and proper performance test of the WASM3 WebAssembly interpreter, the authors provide valuable research in regard to the practical use of micro-services, and containerization in the CubeSats. For the sake of the usefulness and completeness of the porting and performance testing – the authors suggest the most-known STEM platforms as the test environments. Concluding the research by the practical porting and testing steps, and found limitations of the containerization, the authors come up with a newly defined concept of so-called Software Defined Satellites. Such a concept could help the industry to minimize risks in reusing the software, perform several missions on the same CubeSat spacecraft, and thus, drastically decrease the cost of CubeSats launches.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
