Developing mission operations tools and procedures for the Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA) CubeSat Mission

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2018.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 85-87).Small satellites (CubeSats) provide platforms for science payloads in space. A previous Earth weather observing CubeSat mission, the Micro-sized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite-1 (MicroMAS-1), used a manual approach to both testing and commanding. This approach did not work well when it came to mission operations, as it was error-prone, stressful, and non-repeatable. In this thesis work, we designed and implemented an automated testing framework for the Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA) CubeSat, which was used during testing and mission operations; we also prepared tools and procedures for mission operations. The Mi-RaTA system presented large improvements in usability and repeatability as compared to the MicroMAS-1 system; for instance, an automated functional test could be run 38x faster as compared to a manual functional test.by Erin Lynn Main.M. Eng