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Abstract
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| To start a CubeSat student project, it is very important to have a long-term group of students interested, and that they gain hands-on experience from the beginning, even if they are just starting their bachelor degree. ETSIT-UPM is in charge of the communications subsystem of the QBito CubeSat participating in the QB50 Project. As a starting point for the development of the COMM communications subsystem we are making a prototype based on the Texas Instruments MSP430 platform. This microcontroller has already been successfully used in several CubeSat missions. We are also including the TI CC1120 UHF Transceiver. This will be a first prototype for the COMM subsystem that we want to keep developing and working on to become a demonstrator to show students early in their career in a simple manner the complexity behind the development of a nanosatellite and its communication subsystem. The demonstrator prototype will be connected to several sensors; they will be managed by the MSP430. Using a request (or an automatic programmed event) their information will be sent to another similar transceiver board emulating the transmission of telecommands and telemetries. We use a Graphical User Interface (GUI) application for controlling the status and sending commands from one demonstrator to another. Our goal is to lower the difficulty curve of understanding such a system, similarly to current popular platforms like Arduino or Raspberry Pi. The demonstrator presents in a structured manner the flow of operations of a satellite. This can be used to teach not only future CubeSat team members but also to illustrate telecommunication theory seen in ETSIT-UPM degrees and to attract new students to nanosatellite projects. Alongside academic purposes, we will use this COMM demonstrator for antenna testing, mod/cod algorithms testing and, in the future, it will be integrated with our UHF/VHF ground station. | |
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International
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Si |
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Congress
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5th CubeSat Symposium |
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960 |
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Place
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Royal Military Academy of Brussels in Belgium |
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Reviewers
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Si |
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ISBN/ISSN
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Start Date
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03/06/2013 |
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End Date
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05/06/2013 |
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From page
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68 |
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To page
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68 |
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5th European CubeSat Symposium - Book of Abstracts |