Session
Session VIII: FJR Student Competition
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
Currently, radar measurements of low-earth-orbit CubeSats are only possible during a small portion of a CubeSat’s orbit – typically long after the CubeSat’s deployment – making near real-time space situational awareness (SSA) difficult. The CU Boulder Smead Aerospace Engineering Department has developed a concept to monitor CubeSat deployments from the deployer itself and provide relative position and velocity measurements of deployed payloads to provide faster orbital parameter estimation. Teaming with NanoRacks LLC, the VANTAGE team (Visual Approximation of Nanosat Trajectories to Augment Ground-based Estimation) has developed an innovative sensor package prototype consisting of an Infra-red (IR) Time of Flight (ToF) camera for close-range CubeSat position measurements and a monochrome optical camera for continued detection and in-plane position refinement, as well as a set of algorithms to process and fuse these CubeSat position measurements. These sensors and their avionics are incorporated into a prototype integrated system designed to fit within a single 6U CubeSat Deployment silo on the NanoRacks ISS deployer, enabling the detection, identification, and tracking of up to 6 CubeSats out to 100m with a maximum positional error of 10m within 15 minutes of deployment.
Design of an In-Situ Sensor Package to Track CubeSat Deployments
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Currently, radar measurements of low-earth-orbit CubeSats are only possible during a small portion of a CubeSat’s orbit – typically long after the CubeSat’s deployment – making near real-time space situational awareness (SSA) difficult. The CU Boulder Smead Aerospace Engineering Department has developed a concept to monitor CubeSat deployments from the deployer itself and provide relative position and velocity measurements of deployed payloads to provide faster orbital parameter estimation. Teaming with NanoRacks LLC, the VANTAGE team (Visual Approximation of Nanosat Trajectories to Augment Ground-based Estimation) has developed an innovative sensor package prototype consisting of an Infra-red (IR) Time of Flight (ToF) camera for close-range CubeSat position measurements and a monochrome optical camera for continued detection and in-plane position refinement, as well as a set of algorithms to process and fuse these CubeSat position measurements. These sensors and their avionics are incorporated into a prototype integrated system designed to fit within a single 6U CubeSat Deployment silo on the NanoRacks ISS deployer, enabling the detection, identification, and tracking of up to 6 CubeSats out to 100m with a maximum positional error of 10m within 15 minutes of deployment.
