Session
Flash Talks Session 5
Location
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract
The Catarina Constellation is a Brazilian small-satellite initiative conceived to expand and modernize national space-based services through low-cost, scalable, and application-oriented CubeSat missions. Structured into mission-specific fleets, the constellation is designed to address strategic national needs while simultaneously fostering technological development and industrial capability within Brazil. Its first fleet is dedicated to environmental data collection, supporting governmental agencies and research institutions that rely on timely and reliable information for environmental monitoring, water resource management, and agricultural planning. Within this context, the Catarina-A2 mission represents a key step in the deployment of the constellation’s environmental data collection segment. Catarina-A2 is a 3U CubeSat developed by the SENAI Institute for Innovation in Embedded Systems and is primarily intended to operate as an orbital receiver for Data Collection Platforms (DCPs) integrated into the Brazilian Data Collection System (SBCD). By increasing the number of available spaceborne receivers, the mission contributes to improved temporal coverage and data availability across Brazilian territory and neighboring regions. A major innovative aspect of Catarina-A2 is the inclusion of a fully in-house developed Software Defined Radio (SDR) payload, which operates as a secondary and redundant data collection payload alongside a traditional hardware-based receiver. The SDR was specifically designed to receive and decode SBCD transmissions, with particular emphasis on compatibility with the Argos-2 protocol. By adopting an SDR-based architecture, the mission departs from conventional fixed-function payload designs and introduces a high degree of flexibility, enabling signal processing and decoding functionalities to be implemented, modified, and optimized in software. The SDR payload integrates a wideband RF transceiver with a high-performance embedded processing platform, allowing near real-time digital signal processing and protocol handling. In addition to providing redundancy, the SDR enables in-orbit experimentation with alternative Argos-2 reception and decoding strategies, supporting performance evaluation and future system evolution. The payload also features an independent downlink channel for internal telemetry transmission and supports partial remote software updates, allowing new functionalities and algorithmic improvements to be deployed during mission operations. The Catarina-A2 Proto-Flight Model has successfully completed integration and environmental qualification campaigns, including vibration and thermal-vacuum testing, demonstrating the readiness of both the satellite platform and the SDR payload for flight. Overall, the mission highlights the Catarina Constellation’s role as a testbed for innovative, reconfigurable communication payloads and demonstrates the feasibility of using SDRs as operational elements in CubeSat-based environmental data collection systems.
Document Type
Event
Catarina-A2: A CubeSat-Based Approach to Environmental Data Collection Using SDR Technology in the Catarina Constellation
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
The Catarina Constellation is a Brazilian small-satellite initiative conceived to expand and modernize national space-based services through low-cost, scalable, and application-oriented CubeSat missions. Structured into mission-specific fleets, the constellation is designed to address strategic national needs while simultaneously fostering technological development and industrial capability within Brazil. Its first fleet is dedicated to environmental data collection, supporting governmental agencies and research institutions that rely on timely and reliable information for environmental monitoring, water resource management, and agricultural planning. Within this context, the Catarina-A2 mission represents a key step in the deployment of the constellation’s environmental data collection segment. Catarina-A2 is a 3U CubeSat developed by the SENAI Institute for Innovation in Embedded Systems and is primarily intended to operate as an orbital receiver for Data Collection Platforms (DCPs) integrated into the Brazilian Data Collection System (SBCD). By increasing the number of available spaceborne receivers, the mission contributes to improved temporal coverage and data availability across Brazilian territory and neighboring regions. A major innovative aspect of Catarina-A2 is the inclusion of a fully in-house developed Software Defined Radio (SDR) payload, which operates as a secondary and redundant data collection payload alongside a traditional hardware-based receiver. The SDR was specifically designed to receive and decode SBCD transmissions, with particular emphasis on compatibility with the Argos-2 protocol. By adopting an SDR-based architecture, the mission departs from conventional fixed-function payload designs and introduces a high degree of flexibility, enabling signal processing and decoding functionalities to be implemented, modified, and optimized in software. The SDR payload integrates a wideband RF transceiver with a high-performance embedded processing platform, allowing near real-time digital signal processing and protocol handling. In addition to providing redundancy, the SDR enables in-orbit experimentation with alternative Argos-2 reception and decoding strategies, supporting performance evaluation and future system evolution. The payload also features an independent downlink channel for internal telemetry transmission and supports partial remote software updates, allowing new functionalities and algorithmic improvements to be deployed during mission operations. The Catarina-A2 Proto-Flight Model has successfully completed integration and environmental qualification campaigns, including vibration and thermal-vacuum testing, demonstrating the readiness of both the satellite platform and the SDR payload for flight. Overall, the mission highlights the Catarina Constellation’s role as a testbed for innovative, reconfigurable communication payloads and demonstrates the feasibility of using SDRs as operational elements in CubeSat-based environmental data collection systems.
