Development of CubeSat Vibration Testing Capabilities for the Naval Postgraduate School and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

The Naval Postgraduate School is currently developing their first CubeSat, the Solar Cell Array Tester CubeSat, or NPS-SCAT. Launching a CubeSat, such as NPS-SCAT, requires environmental testing to ensure not only the success of the mission, but also the safety of other CubeSats housed in the same deployer. This thesis will address the development of CubeSat vibration testing methodology at NPS, including subsystem testing, engineering unit qualification, and flight unit testing. In addition, the new Cal Poly CubeSat Test POD Mk III will be introduced and evaluated based upon comparison with the Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). Using examples from the development of NPS-SCAT and test data from Cal Poly’s Test POD Mk III and P-POD, the current CubeSat testing methodology will be verified and an improved method for NPS CubeSat subsystem testing will be presented