EIRFLAT-1: A FlatSat platform for the development and testing of the 2U CubeSat EIRSAT-1

The Educational Irish Research Satellite (EIRSAT-1) is a 2U CubeSat being designed, built and tested at University College Dublin. A FlatSat platform known as EIRFLAT-1 has been constructed to enable the testing and development of the CubeSat. EIRFLAT-1 facilitates the electrical connections between CubeSat components while leaving key interfaces accessible for test equipment and allowing for the hot swapping of components. Commercial Off The Shelf and in-house developed hardware has been tested using EIRFLAT-1 at component, subsystem and full system level. In addition, the FlatSat has been used for flight software development. This paper describes the design of EIRFLAT-1 including electrical and mechanical components and additional ground support equipment developed to assist in the testing and development activities. EIRFLAT-1 has proven to be an invaluable tool for testing and has led to the discovery of issues and unexpected behaviour with flight hardware which would have contributed to schedule delays if undiscovered until after the satellite was assembled. Moreover, EIRFLAT-1 facilitated early and incremental testing of both software and operations procedures. The schematics for the electrical design of EIRFLAT-1, which is compatible with all CubeSat Kit PC/104 components, has been made publicly available for use by other educational CubeSat team

Experiences in firmware development for a CubeSat instrument payload

Recent advancements in gamma-ray detector technology have brought new opportunities to study gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy phenomena. However, there is a lack of dissemination on the development methods, tools and techniques used in the production of instrument flight firmware. This is understandable as firmware for spacecraft payloads may be proprietary or exceptionally hardware specific and so is not always published. However, this leaves a gap in the knowledge for CubeSat teams, especially those consisting of university students who may be building a custom spacecraft payload with limited initial experience. The Gamma-Ray Module (GMOD) on-board EIRSAT-1, a 2U CubeSat in the 2nd European Space Agency Fly Your Satellite! programme, is one such instrument. GMOD features a 25x25x40mm Scionix CeBr3 scintillator, coupled to an array of 16 (4x4) JSeries OnSemiconductor MicroFJ-60035-TSV silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) with readout provided by the SIPHRA IDE3380 application specific integrated circuit. The instrument is supported by the Gamma-Ray Module motherboard which controls and configures the instrument, providing regulated voltage and current sources as well as generating time tagged event packets and a temporary on-board flash storage. At the core of this system is the Texas Instruments MSP430FR5994 microcontroller. A custom firmware was produced for the instrument by the EIRSAT-1 team over numerous cycles of testing and development to reliably perform the long duration tasks of readout, storage and transfer of time tagged event data to the EIRSAT-1 on-board computer. Recognising the value of sharing our experiences and pitfalls on firmware development with the wider CubeSat community, this paper will provide an introduction to GMOD, with focus primarily on the development approach of the firmware. The development, testing, version control, essential tools and an overview of how the resources provided by the device manufacturer were used will be examined, such that the lessons learned may be extended to other payloads from student-led mission

Update on the status of the Educational Irish Research Satellite (EIRSAT-1)

The Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, is a 2U CubeSat being implemented by a student-led team at University College Dublin, as part of the 2nd round of the European Space Agency’s Fly Your Satellite! programme. In development since 2017, the mission has several scientific, technological and outreach goals. It will fly an in-house developed antenna deployment module, along with three custom payloads, which are integrated with commercial off-the-shelf subsystems. In preparation for the flight model, a full-system engineering qualification model of the spacecraft has undergone an extensive period of test campaigns, including full functional tests, a mission test, and environmental testing at the European Space Agency’s CubeSat Support Facility in Redu, Belgium. Beyond the technical, educational, and capacity-building goals of the mission, EIRSAT-1 aims to inspire wider study of STEM subjects, while highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary teams and creating greater awareness of space in everyday life. A wide range of outreach activities are being undertaken to realise these aims. This paper provides a status update on key aspects of the EIRSAT-1 project and the next steps towards launc

Mobile Agents -- Smart Messages

Wireless communication with Mobile Computing devices is known to be problematic. It is very different in character from conventional communication over wired networks. Since many distributed applications make assumptions about network characteristics, they may not be used in a hostile mobile environment. We are proposing a new kind of messaging system which incorporates adaptive behaviour into the messages themselves. We call these `Smart Messages', and implement them using Mobile Agents. The metaphor we use is of a message being delivered by a courier (Mobile Agent), on a potentially unresolved route. The `intelligence' is in the messages themselves rather than in the network. The approach taken expands on the self-routing capabilities of current Mobile Agent systems such as Aglets or Telescript. We aim to provide structured support for handling the particular problems associated with wireless communications. These include very limited, variable and asymmetric bandwidth, frequent an..

Agent Mediated Collaborative Web Page Filtering

. Intelligent filtering of multimedia documents such as World Wide Web (WWW) pages is an extremely difficult task to automate. However, the determination of a page's relevance to one's interests is a skill that comes with ease to most humans. This paper outlines a system architecture, developed using Agent Oriented Design (AOD), aimed at providing page filtering within a limited domain. This domain is specified via an explicit taxonomy. A prototype system was built using this architecture, which draws upon a user's innate ability to determine the relevance of web pages to their own information needs. It is argued that the resulting system incorporates the best aspects of existing Automated Collaborative Filtering (ACF) systems, whilst still retaining the benefits of the more traditional, feature based approach. In support of this claim and the general success of these systems, initial evaluation of the system is also reported. 1. Introduction Many systems in recent times have attempte..

Software Agents: A review

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Mission Test Campaign for the EIRSAT-1 Engineering Qualification Model

The compact, standardised form factor of CubeSats allows for the use of commercial off-the-shelf components, reducing traditional barriers to entry, such as cost and development time. More than 1500 of these small spacecraft have been launched in the past 20 years, with improving capabilities that enable a wide range of mission profiles. The Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, is a CubeSat being developed by a student-led team with goals that span education, technology demonstration and science. A comprehensive mission test plan, in which in-flight conditions are simulated, has been developed for EIRSAT-1 and implemented using an engineering qualification model of the spacecraft. In addition to verifying 41 mission requirements, the successful execution of the mission test plan established that the full satellite system can perform the intended mission. Mission testing also proved to be an invaluable tool to prepare for launch and operations, providing the team with a more complete understanding of the satellite’s expected on-orbit behaviour. This work presents a detailed description of the mission test planning process and implementation, as well as key results and lessons learned. In doing so, this work aims to improve the on-orbit reliability of CubeSats by disseminating resources and good practice around mission testing

Mission Test Campaign for the EIRSAT-1 Engineering Qualification Model

The compact, standardised form factor of CubeSats allows for the use of commercial off-the-shelf components, reducing traditional barriers to entry, such as cost and development time. More than 1500 of these small spacecraft have been launched in the past 20 years, with improving capabilities that enable a wide range of mission profiles. The Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, is a CubeSat being developed by a student-led team with goals that span education, technology demonstration and science. A comprehensive mission test plan, in which in-flight conditions are simulated, has been developed for EIRSAT-1 and implemented using an engineering qualification model of the spacecraft. In addition to verifying 41 mission requirements, the successful execution of the mission test plan established that the full satellite system can perform the intended mission. Mission testing also proved to be an invaluable tool to prepare for launch and operations, providing the team with a more complete understanding of the satellite’s expected on-orbit behaviour. This work presents a detailed description of the mission test planning process and implementation, as well as key results and lessons learned. In doing so, this work aims to improve the on-orbit reliability of CubeSats by disseminating resources and good practice around mission testing