CubeSat Development for European Space Agency’s Fly Your Satellite! Programme
Group Members
Richard Abrams, Sebastian Aspinall, James Christie, Lian Ming Goh, Hubert Khoo, Yi Zhe KohSupervisors
Dr Scott Walker, Dr Hanna Sykulska-LawrenceSupporters
Fly Your Satellite!, European Space AgencyWith a scientific mission objective to support space debris research and orbital re-entry prediction tools, the University of Southampton has been developing its first CubeSat, the University of Southampton Small Satellite (UoS3), since 2014. In 2017, the UoS3 team was successful in obtaining a flight opportunity through the European Space Agency’s Fly Your Satellite! Programme. Since then, the design, development, and testing campaigns for the UoS3 CubeSat follows the strict requirements and standards that are used in the satellite industry today.
The CubeSat built is 10x10x10 cm in dimension and carries a total of three payloads on board. This allow the collection of position and orientation data throughout the satellite’s lifetime, that will be useful for supporting orbital re-entry prediction models. Pictures will also be taken from space and used for outreach and as an inspiration for the next generation.
This year, the focus is on the development and testing of the remaining engineering model subsystems, which are mainly the Electrical Power System, Software and On-Board Data Handling, and Telemetry, Tracking and Com- mand subsystems. New changes to the design were added and verified for improvement on the performance of the subsystem. Novel ways of testing and verifying certain key functionalities of the CubeSat were also discussed and implemented. After completion of all subsystem verification and acceptance of design, the next phase of this project could then be commenced, which is the full systems integration and verification leading to the ambient and environmental test campaigns for flight qualification.
The CubeSat built is 10x10x10 cm in dimension and carries a total of three payloads on board. This allow the collection of position and orientation data throughout the satellite’s lifetime, that will be useful for supporting orbital re-entry prediction models. Pictures will also be taken from space and used for outreach and as an inspiration for the next generation.
This year, the focus is on the development and testing of the remaining engineering model subsystems, which are mainly the Electrical Power System, Software and On-Board Data Handling, and Telemetry, Tracking and Com- mand subsystems. New changes to the design were added and verified for improvement on the performance of the subsystem. Novel ways of testing and verifying certain key functionalities of the CubeSat were also discussed and implemented. After completion of all subsystem verification and acceptance of design, the next phase of this project could then be commenced, which is the full systems integration and verification leading to the ambient and environmental test campaigns for flight qualification.





