Session
Weekend Session 7: Year in Review - Research & Academia
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
SPORT is an international partnership mission between Brazil and the United States to study ionospheric space weather processes that occur at low latitudes. Operating a CubeSat on orbit is certainly one of the most exciting milestones of a CubeSat project, but it is only a part of the mission. To be able to achieve this milestone the efforts of the engineering team were focused late in the project on the integration, testing, and delivery followed by the on-orbit commissioning of the observatory. This paper details the major events and lessons learned by the SPORT team during these phases of the project. SPORT experienced a failure of the battery subsystem during environmental testing followed by physical damage during shipping from Brazil to the United States for Launch. However, more than pointing out these problems, solutions, and lessons learned, this paper explains how the international team worked to overcome the issues and finalize the observatory for delivery and launch. After release from the ISS the SPORT team looked forward to the on-orbit observatory operations, first contacts, and the commissioning phase of the observatory, that is also described on this paper.
Lessons Learned During Testing Through Commissioning of the Joint Brazil-US SPORT Mission
Utah State University, Logan, UT
SPORT is an international partnership mission between Brazil and the United States to study ionospheric space weather processes that occur at low latitudes. Operating a CubeSat on orbit is certainly one of the most exciting milestones of a CubeSat project, but it is only a part of the mission. To be able to achieve this milestone the efforts of the engineering team were focused late in the project on the integration, testing, and delivery followed by the on-orbit commissioning of the observatory. This paper details the major events and lessons learned by the SPORT team during these phases of the project. SPORT experienced a failure of the battery subsystem during environmental testing followed by physical damage during shipping from Brazil to the United States for Launch. However, more than pointing out these problems, solutions, and lessons learned, this paper explains how the international team worked to overcome the issues and finalize the observatory for delivery and launch. After release from the ISS the SPORT team looked forward to the on-orbit observatory operations, first contacts, and the commissioning phase of the observatory, that is also described on this paper.
