Description
The objective of the activity is to design, manufacture and test an engineering model of a standalone subsystem that will collect telemetry and command logs. In the event of mission failure the device will communicate this to the mission operations team to improve the speed and depth of understanding behind the root-cause of the mission failure. Targeted Improvements: Enabling higher operational reliability of nano- and microsatellites by improving the understanding of the root causes of in-orbit satellite failures. Description: CubeSat missions have evolved over the past decade, and they have changed from educational tools to In Orbit Demonstration (IOD) platforms to more commercial satcom industry driven missions (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) from space, spectrum monitoring from space). This change has resulted in proposals to deploy large CubeSat constellations in LEO. The short mission lifetime of CubeSat platforms can be attributed to the use of COTS and quick design cycles. To an extent, lower launch costs have encouraged industries to conduct pilot missions that are used to directly test their payloads in space. This has resulted in higher chances of missions to fail. When such missions fail, in most cases it is an abrupt loss of communication link with the S/C. As a result, the operationsteam are left in the blind for days to weeks trying to revive the satellite and it generally takes longer to understand the root-cause of a failure. In most cases if a S/C does not revive, it might not be possible to conclude the reason for failure. This can impact the development of subsequent missions as the design team is not aware of the root-cause. In-order to reduce the time needed to understand the root-cause of a failure it is important to have a redundant bidirectional link with a subsystem in the S/C that can operate independently and record the telemetry data in the S/C. The satellite telemetry recorder and transmitter shall operate independently to monitor the S/C bus by recording vital telemetry, any anomalies, and a log of last communicated commands from the on-boardcomputer of the S/C. When a nano- or microsatellite mission fails, the subsystem shall recognise the failure and start transmittingperiodic beacons until a link is established with a dedicated ground segment to invoke a downlink to dump all the recorded information. The sub-system could also act as the controller to trigger any de-orbiting device on board the spacecraft. An engineering modelconsisting of including telemetry, command log recorder, electrical power conditioning unit, power generation unit, S/C interface and transceiver and firmware will be designed, manufactured and tested. Footnote: On Delegation Request activities will only be initiated on the explicit request of at least one National Delegation. Procurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to: http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Business_with_ESA/Small_and_Medium_Sized_En…