Communications team visit to Stevenage

Daniel Ludlow & Tim Mead from the Communications team have travelled up to Stevenage from Portsmouth for a day visit.
They have been carrying out a number of tasks:
- Transporting the cubesat hardware for platform testing in Stevenage
- Installation of the new computers and software in the Stevenage ground station
- Assessing the performance of the terminal node controller
- Comparing the ground station set-up in Stevenage to that in Portsmouth.
The computer installations have progressed well. "It was really useful to see the Stevenage ground station set-up and also to meet the Stevenage guys in person" says Daniel, Communications key area lead. The plan is to have near-identical set-ups in both ground stations to improve the ground station operation efficiency.

New LunchSat team for 2010-2011

With the new influx of graduates on the Graduate Development Programme in October 2010, the 2010-2011 LunchSat team has been selected and has had the first meeting of the year on 11th October 2010. The video conference session involved the whole team being able to meet the new starters, followed by laboratory and ground station visits. There are also changes to the organisation to streamline the previous 14 sub-systems down into 6 key areas: Project Management, OBC, Communications, Payload, Platform, and Operations. This is expected to help to reduce the time spent in meetings and to enable the project to cope better with team members being unavailable at certain times due to illness or other work commitments. By having more people associated with each old sub-system, the workload can be better spread around each key area depending on priority. The main objectives this year is to aim for the cubesat platform to be ready for final flight testing by the start of 2012, significant payload development and a radio transmission between the Stevenage and Portsmouth ground stations via satellite.

Concluding another successful year of Lunchsat

A successful End-of-Year Management Review has concluded progress on the Lunchsat project for the year 2009-10.

The Management Review is an annual opportunity for the Lunchsat team to express the achievement made on the project to senior management including Pat Wood, the Chief Technical Officer of Astrium Satellites.

Project lead Nick Fishwick has thanked the entire Lunchsat team following a successful Management Review, which saw senior Astrium managers Pat Wood, Nick Chesher and Bob Baldwin, along with the line managers of some of the team members, attend a summary of what has been achieved over the last year.

The networking event was held in the Stevenage Viewing Gallery; the presentation was delivered by Nick alongside Chris Lord (Communications) and Natasha Pushkin (Thermal), who provided overviews of their respective subsystems and also told of their experiences of working on the Lunchsat initiative.

In an open email sent to the team, Nick has thanked 'everyone who has contributed to the project this year, a lot has been achieved thanks to all your efforts'.

"Highlights include the passive ADCS trade-off, the solar array power testing, the Portsmouth Groundstation installation and radio licences and the increased characterisation of the OBC and Communications chain.

"We had some great comments, ideas and news from Pat Wood and other managers from the review [...] there are still some focused tasks which need to be worked on in the coming weeks before the new LunchSat year restarts in October with the new graduate intake. I will be talking to sub-systems individually about these in the next few weeks."

Astrium managers reflected on the achievements made and offered valuable advice to the team following the session.

Summary of feedback

In acknowledgement that 'finding a good payload is essential to getting a launch', a recommendation was made by Pat Wood to research a new L-band payload as an option, particularly as funding may be available from a satellite operator such as Inmarsat. Pat was also interested in the potential for internal R&D and the funding mechanisms that would support the development of such payloads.

Nick Chesher provided additional input, suggesting that we can look to Astrium Space Transportation, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) for support with launchers and payloads. The fact that SSTL have begun their own cubesat training programme after witnessing the success of Lunchsat is fantastic news.

Nick concluded his congratulations by looking ahead: "The logistics of next year and how the current team will change with the new graduate intake will also be assessed and you will all hear about the plans for next LunchSat year soon."

So watch this space...

Good impressions follow a successful Systems Review

Project lead Nick Fishwick has thanked the Lunchsat team for the work that has been achieved in the run-up to the Systems Review held today, and is pleased the team has 'been able to show real progress for the year'.

Nick began the review with an introduction to the project, before handing over to Graham Johnson (Systems) who has recently provided input as subsystem supervisor for the new Mission and Subsystems Requirements document and as such, gave insight into the mission objectives for the review. These were followed up with a detailed run-through of progress made in the ADCS, Thermal, Power and Mechanical subsystems.

This continued into the next hour, with Tom Stuttard (Systems, Power) providing an overview of the new Operations subsystem before the work achieved with the On-Board Computer (OBC), Communications, Imager and Groundstations was described. Tim Mead (Power) concluded the technical breakdown of achievements made with his overview of the payload. The experts issued valuable guidance to the team, providing feedback of the session and offering their advice on how the subsystems should progress into the next year as development on the microsatellite continues.

Also in attendance amongst the experts were project champions Ronan Wall and Neil Dunbar, who both expressed their positive impressions of the project -- in particular, on the progress made with power testing.

In the meantime, work continues to conclude subsystem documentation ahead of the Management Review to be held next month, to which senior management will be invited for a debrief on the progress made in the past year.

Ideas fit for a payload

The final formal afternoon session for Lunchsat this year, scheduled to be held tomorrow, is set to take a departure from the usual format -- as members of the team begin to generate ideas for a new payload.

In an unprecedented brainstorming session for the project, team members from the systems and operations subsystems will be developing novel ideas for a new payload for Lunchsat, in an attempt to distinguish the project from the cubesats that have gone before.

Tomorrow's meeting will begin with a general discussion and subsystem roundup, to identify outstanding work in the usual afternoon session format. This is to be followed by the payload brainstorming session, set to last up to an hour, before a briefing of the Systems Review format and summary meeting conclude the afternoon session.

The imager currently forms the primary payload for Lunchsat, although the CanX-2 chassis, upon which the cubesat is based, has the volume to accommodate additional flight hardware. As such, there is a need to research options for additional instrumentation, within the constraints of physical volume and cost. This is of particular importance from a launch perspective, as the European Space Agency selects to financially assist the launch of missions based on the scientific merit of their payloads.

As such, further research into payload options could derive from in-house research and development, or assistance from external sources via collaboration as part of the wider Cubesat Research Network (CRN). Over the longer-term, it is anticipated that payload design and development is to be realised internally, within the Lunchsat team.

At present, the current imager will be responsible for accomplishing the main objective of Lunchsat -- to provide colour images of the Earth from low-Earth orbit for the assessment of weather conditions at a resolution reasonable enough to show basic topographical features. Reflecting the capability of modern meteorological satellites, one option to extend the payload toolkit of Lunchsat would be to install sensors and instrumentation to monitor and track the weather conditions of Earth and the immediate space environment. The main challenge remains however -- to achieve such an extension of functionality while keeping to the tight cost constraints realistic for a microsatellite.

Other project work planned for the final afternoon session of the year include the completion of subsystem summary documentation, the updating of work package descriptions to assist the handover from the current team to the incoming graduate intake, and the conclusion of any other outstanding issues.

For more information on the results of the research into payload options, refer to the Payload section of the Lunchsat website.

Preparation begins for systems and management reviews

As the team works to finish subsystem reports and testing, the dates for the key events concluding the Lunchsat programme for this year have been finalised.

Senior and line management have been invited to attend the events, which aim to gather the Lunchsat team, management and interested internal parties for a briefing on the progress made over the past twelve months.

The details of the final sessions scheduled for this year are as follows:

Afternoon Session: Thursday 8 July

Another of the standard afternoon work sessions to conclude work in preparation for the upcoming reviews. Work shall begin on the presentations required for the reviews.

Subsystem Reviews: Monday 19 to Tuesday 27 July

Separate technical review sessions allowing Astrium experts to meet with their respective subsystem team members, for the review of documents and results attained over the year.

Afternoon Session: Thursday 22 July

The final afternoon session of the year, scheduled for preparation of the Systems Review.

Systems Review: Wednesday 28 July

A videoconference between Portsmouth and Stevenage will allow the Lunchsat team to connect for a round-table review with Astrium systems experts. The experts will share their opinions and advice for the team following presentations from subsystem team members.

Management Review: Friday 27 August

The annual End-of-Year Management Review, concluding the Lunchsat graduate training programme in the Stevenage Viewing Gallery. In a slightly different approach to the session, project lead Nick Fishwick is set to deliver the presentation to management, summarising the benefits of the programme and the progress made over the past year and looking for inputs from team members to describe their experiences. Astrium senior management, including Chief Technical Officer Pat Wood, are set to attend. A team lunch will be organised to conclude the programme and celebrate the achievements of the team.

The End-of-Year Management Review signals the conclusion of Lunchsat progress for 2009-10. Stay tuned as preparation begins for the upcoming 2010-11 session!

Space Systems lecture series begins

The project manager of Lunchsat, Nick Fishwick has teamed up with Jessica Housden of Campus Management, the other graduate initiative of EADS Astrium, to organise a series of lectures about space systems engineering.

These internal lectures, part of the Space Systems series for Lunchsat and Campus Management, aims to connect the two teams with experts in the field to supplement graduate training and facilitate knowledge transfer between the two graduate initiatives.

The lunchtime sessions are to occur for both teams on the second Thursday of each month from now until July, 13:00 - 13:30 with each aiming to cover one of seven topics about space system engineering, the basic foundation for microsatellite development.

The schedule is set to cover the OBC and Software (January), Mechanical (February), Antennas and RF (March), Payload (April), Thermal (May), Propulsion (June) and ADCS (July).

Latest from the Project Management focus team

The Lunchsat Project Management focus team recently issued its latest actions to scope upcoming work packages for the subsystems and classify activities from current progress to the 2012 launch.

Subsystem leads are to supervise the extension of subsystem work package descriptions for completion by February; descriptions for each are to be released on our website pages to assist in the definition of each subsystem.

Those involved are Nick Fishwick (Project Management and Power), Stephen Pulker (On-Board Computer and Imager), Natasha Pushkin (Thermal and ADCS), Alex Buick (Operations and Payload), Jason Stones (Media and Communications), Fatou Mbaye (Systems and Mechanical) and Nicolas Sarda (Groundstations).

The focus team also arrived at a complete schedule that defines Lunchsat activity from present to the future launch. Three work packages are to be defined per subsystem for assignment to each of the three Lunchsat phases that have since been defined (1-3); these are detailed in turn (A-E):

Phase 1: Design and Analysis, October 2009 to September 2010
Phase 2: Testing and Pre-Launch, October 2010 to December 2011
Phase 3: Launch and Operations, 2012

Phase A: Detailed Definition, Manufacturing and Testing (GDP Year 1), October 2009 to August 2010
Phase B: Detailed Definition, Manufacturing and Testing (GDP Year 2), October 2010 to June 2011
Phase C: System Level Integration and Testing, July to December 2011
Phase D: Pre-Launch Activities and Launch, January to June 2012
Phase E: In-Orbit Commissioning and Operations, July to December 2012

The Lunchsat website now features details of our complete schedule.

All-new lineup announced for 2010

It is with great pleasure (and relief!) that the current Lunchsat team is able to welcome its new members – each of which are taking the proud commitment to join our project as we rocket into 2010 with challenging ambitions.

The new graduates have been individually selected to join the unique Graduate Development Programme (GDP) and Direct Entry Graduate (DEG) schemes of EADS Astrium, both serving as the next logical step from university as they allow the graduates to develop their skills over a two-year period.

DEGs can gain valuable contacts and accelerated experience over the two years in a single department. The GDP enables graduates to gain a wider portfolio of skills and experience as they are encouraged to partake in a minimum of four six-month rotational placements, to fully understand and appreciate the Astrium business in Stevenage, Portsmouth and continental Europe.

Each new Astrium graduate that has chosen Lunchsat as their auxiliary project will be bringing their own experiences, qualities and talents to the initiative, with this year's intake representing backgrounds from both technology and business in equal measure. They join the current members of the team at an exciting turning point for the project, as we start looking forward to an imminent launch and in doing so, commission a new Operations subsystem in readiness to handle post-launch attitude and maintenance of the Lunchsat nanosatellite in space.

Select project members from the previous 2008-09 year are set to become the new technical experts and subsystem leads as they assume advisory roles for the new graduates.

The all-new lineup for 2009-10 sees Matthew Ashworth (Portsmouth Groundstation), Alex Buick (Operations), Billy Chan (Payload: Imager), Martin Discors (Payload: Imager), Perry Hinneh (Mechanical), Goodwell Kapfunde (Stevenage Groundstation), Christopher Lord (ADCS), Daniel Ludlow (Communications), Fatou Mbaye (Systems), Timothy Mead (Power), Ian Miles (OBC), Stephen Pulker (Project Management, OBC), Natasha Pushkin (Thermal), Nicolas Sarda (Stevenage Groundstation), Mauricio Molas Serrano (Portsmouth Groundstation), Thomas Stuttard (Systems, Power), Andrew White (Communications) and Benjamin Yarwood (Mechanical) join the team.

They join golden oldies and those dedicated few continuing their roles from last year: Nicholas Carter (ADCS), Martin Garland (Payload: Imager), Stephen Jones (Portsmouth Groundstation), Edward Nelson (Thermal), Gurmeet Singh Pawar (Power), Julia Ryan (Mechanical), Jason Stones (Media) and Jonathan Wynn (Payload: Imager), headed up by project lead Nick Fishwick and overseen by project champion, Ronan Wall.

You can keep up-to-date with this year's exciting Lunchsat developments on this blog and on our website at http://www.lunchsat.eu/. Stay tuned and follow our ambitions as we move forward into 2010 and evolve our nanosatellite project from a hobbyist lunchtime activity to a launch-ready payload!

Lunchsat is a unique graduate initiative of EADS Astrium – a mission to build a cube nanosatellite that carries the minimum of what is needed to fly and operate in space. Find out more about Lunchsat and the new team for 2010; space company EADS Astrium and its graduate entry programmes.

Management Review to conclude Lunchsat for 2008-09

The annual Management Review, an opportunity for Lunchsat members to present their progress made on the project over the past year to line and senior managers, begins tomorrow morning at Astrium in Stevenage.

This is to follow the successful Technical Review held on Wednesday, when the team was given the chance to discuss the work achieved to-date with technical experts with prior experience on cubesat projects.

The Management Review is to kick off with a team photo at 10:00 in the Viewing Gallery, followed by refreshments and talks with the managers. The presentation is to begin at 11:00, with an introduction from project member Neil Dunbar followed by subsystem talks from Nick Fishwick (Project Management), Jonathan Wynn (Payload: Imager; Media), Jacques Cottier (Systems) and Gurmeet Pawar (Power).

Questions from management will conclude the review session at midday - when the team will move onto Ask in Stevenage for lunch to celebrate the conclusion of the Lunchsat project for 2008-09.

The next intake of Astrium graduates is scheduled for late September, when the new arrivals will select one of the two unique initiatives of the graduate development programme - Campus Management, or Lunchsat.

Technical Review starts today

The traditional end-of-year Lunchsat technical review is to begin today, Wednesday 19 August, at 13:00.

An important part of the project, the Technical Review concludes Lunchsat activities for the year, with activity resuming in October as the next intake of graduates join Astrium and choose to participate in the project.

The review will be an opportunity for subsystem leads to present the work achieved this year, focusing on the progress of actions agreed as a result of the previous major milestone, the Mid-Year Review.

Technical experts will be on-hand at the review session, to observe the progress made and offer their own expertise to drive the project forward. As a result of collaboration and advice given by the experts, objectives for the 2009-2010 Lunchsat year will be agreed as the primary output from the review.

Reporting on subsystem progress today will be Graham Johnson (Systems), Jonathan Wynn (Payload: Imager), Roisin Speight (Mechanical), Nicholas Carter (AOCS), Aude Brunner (Thermal), Gurmeet Pawar and Frederic Bard (Power), Fabian Frost (OBC), Thomas Dunklin (Stevenage Groundstation) and Nick Fishwick (Project Management).