Lessons Captured? Application of UKube-1 Lessons Identified Into Nanobed Development Process

Abstract

Previous work presented at 4S reported on the lessons identified from the UKube-1 development process prior to launch. Now, with the successful completion of the mission to end of life in August 2015 this work updates as to the lessons identified during the operational phase of the missions, and further reports on the steps taken to capture and embed these lessons into future development processes before conclusively demonstrating them learnt on subsequent projects. Specifically, the work considers NANOBED, a distributed network of nanosatellite engineering models, tools and processes with the objective to facilitate rapid realization of future missions. To date, two NANOBEDs have been deployed to support UK development with funding secured for a first international system, and further systems planned. NANOBED supports nanosatellite development in four key areas: a FlatSat equipped with a flight representative baseline bus of hardware and software, *craft design tool software supporting system engineering and deployment, peer to peer centric standardized processes around integration, and application-specific development for payloads. Two initial lead in payloads are currently under consideration using NANOBED at varying technology readiness levels: an imager, updated from that used on UKube-1, and an intersatellite link utilizing the GlobalStar network