Session
Session 1: The Year in Review
Abstract
Dellingr, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) first 6U CubeSat, was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on November 20, 2017. The primary objective of the mission was to apply and appropriately tailor GSFC knowledge and capability to design and build a CubeSat that increased resiliency and capability, while containing costs. The Dellingr spacecraft is a mixture of COTS and in-house components and includes two science instruments – an advanced gated time-of-flight ion-neutral mass spectrometer (INMS) and a boom mounted fluxgate. While a traditional GSFC spacecraft approach includes detailed analysis, design, testing, and extensive reviews, the Dellingr team adopted a “build, test, fix” approach to identify and correct potential mission ending issues. Yet, despite extensive testing, Dellingr immediately experienced unexpected major anomalies once on orbit. Using a flatsat and the insight gained from extensive on-orbit engineering data, the team was able to alleviate some of these anomalies and recover some of the lost functionality. The extensive set of lessons-learned is driving changes to our systems architecture, flight software, and testing approaches, and has provided valuable insight into what is required to produce a NASA CubeSat science mission with a moderate assurance of mission success, while containing resource requirements.
Dellingr: Reliability Lessons Learned from On-Orbit
Dellingr, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) first 6U CubeSat, was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on November 20, 2017. The primary objective of the mission was to apply and appropriately tailor GSFC knowledge and capability to design and build a CubeSat that increased resiliency and capability, while containing costs. The Dellingr spacecraft is a mixture of COTS and in-house components and includes two science instruments – an advanced gated time-of-flight ion-neutral mass spectrometer (INMS) and a boom mounted fluxgate. While a traditional GSFC spacecraft approach includes detailed analysis, design, testing, and extensive reviews, the Dellingr team adopted a “build, test, fix” approach to identify and correct potential mission ending issues. Yet, despite extensive testing, Dellingr immediately experienced unexpected major anomalies once on orbit. Using a flatsat and the insight gained from extensive on-orbit engineering data, the team was able to alleviate some of these anomalies and recover some of the lost functionality. The extensive set of lessons-learned is driving changes to our systems architecture, flight software, and testing approaches, and has provided valuable insight into what is required to produce a NASA CubeSat science mission with a moderate assurance of mission success, while containing resource requirements.
