A flexible CubeSat education platform combining software development and hardware engineering

Abstract

While many secondary schools offer courses or extracurricular activities that focus on satellite engineering, e.g. CanSats or the assembly of ground stations, these projects usually stay close to ground. With SpaceTeamSat1, the TU Wien Space Team wants to enhance this approach and tackle the challenge to perform various experiments in space, enabling students to participate in a space mission that actually orbits our planet. Therefore, our goal is to develop a 1U CubeSat platform, which allows students at secondary schools to access a set of different sensors connected to a Raspberry Pi. Consequently, students can write their own software experiments in Python and exploit the possibilities of sensors in space. In this context, participation happens at different stages: For one, students are getting in contact with Python, which also allows an easy step into software engineering paradigms. Moreover, our team will pose some challenges, such as re-doing an earlier satellite mission and giving impressions about how CubeSats can be used, e.g. to combat climate change. To complete these challenges, the CubeSat is equipped with various sensors such as temperature sensors, gyrometers, magnetometers, as well as two cameras. Moreover, the participating students also have the possibility to design their own experiments independently to leave room for creativity. Further enhancing this educational mission, participating students are also invited to work on hardware topics. This is mainly aimed at engineering schools, which are encouraged to assemble Raspberry Pi HATs which contain the actual mission sensors, as well as a SatNOGS ground station, which also enables students to get an insight on satellite communication. It needs to be considered that the educational mission follows a modular setup since the combination of all individual tasks is not realizable within a single school year. Thus, schools are also able to individually select appropriate tasks. In the past we were already collaborating with the European Space Education Resource Office as we are acting as launch provider of CanSats for ESERO’s Austrian CanSat competition. In this sense, STS1 shall be an extension to the space educational program in Austria. Based on that, we believe that the STS1 mission has a high potential to bring something that is currently out of reach for most people, outer space, closer to a demographic with a lot of talent and enthusiasm for engineering and potential future engineers