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.

Mission requirements document finalised

The Lunchsat team has completed work on the final draft of the Mission and Subsystems Requirements document, summarising the requirements of the project and defining mission objectives, top-level and spacecraft requirements.

The document summarises the objectives and requirements of the Lunchsat mission in terms of cost and lifetime, as well as those of its space segment and two groundstations, and of its future launcher. The document goes on to define requirements of the spacecraft by mass, communications and of the mechanical, thermal and power subsystems, concluding general survivability in the harsh environment of space.

The requirements outlined in this document will form the basis of future subsystem test plans, to verify that the subsystems are being designed in accordance with their required function, and that they have indeed met their requirements.

The Mission and Subsystems Requirements document is the result of collaboration between the Lunchsat subsystem leads, including Fatou Mbaye (Systems) and Julia Ryan (Mechanical) reporting to project lead Nick Fishwick. Graham Johnson (Systems) also provided contributions as subsystem advisor.

For more information, consult the Media area of the Lunchsat website.

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.

Operations and launch: two giant leaps for Lunchsat

In having commissioned a new Operations subsystem to handle the management of post-launch attitude and maintenance of our nanosatellite, the next step in getting Lunchsat into space is to prepare it for launch readiness!

Representatives from the new Operations subsystem and key subsystem leads met this morning in a videoconference between Astrium's Stevenage and Portsmouth sites to discuss the next major stage in the Lunchsat project – launch. Present at the meeting were Alex Buick (Operations), Fatou Mbaye (Systems), Jason Stones (Media), Stephen Pulker (Project Management, OBC) and Natasha Pushkin (Thermal), alongside project manager Nick Fishwick and project champion Ronan Wall.

Over the next month, this team will compile a comprehensive report to present to Astrium management, detailing the options available in four possible launch scenarios. As such, the report is to address the available launchers and options for the Lunchsat payload, forecasted schedules, prospective team involvement and the budget allocations required to support each option. These areas are to be defined in the four separate scenarios foreseeing launch within one year; three years with Pathfinder; three years without Pathfinder; and five years, respectively. 'Not launching is not an option', emphasised project lead Nick Fishwick.

It is currently envisaged for Lunchsat to become flight-ready sometime in 2011 post-testing, in order to piggyback on a ride with the Lisa Pathfinder when the space science mission is launched into space on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2012. This is deemed a strong possibility – particularly given both the financial infeasibility to use a dedicated launcher, and the potential compatibility of the Pathfinder launch window with Lunchsat as a Cubesat, as the payloads of previously launched Cubesats have taken between 9 months and two years to build.

The Operations focus group aims to compare the parameters of our Lunchsat mission with those of others – Aeolus, KaSAT, Astra 1M, Hylas and ExoMars – by liaising with their project managers to assess the true logistics of launch.

Additionally, the report aims to assess the prospective advantageous outputs from Lunchsat once the nanosatellite is launched. These include strengthened public relations through enhanced visibility between Astrium and the wider community, the establishment of Operations training to maintain the satellite in orbit, lessons learned from our first attempt and accelerated technology development in collaboration with our partners in the wider Cubesat Research Network (CRN), if work begins on a second Lunchsat nanosatellite in the longer-term.

As part of Operations requirements, we have entered the process of researching possible worldwide launch sites and configuration scenarios. As Lunchsat will be launched into equatorial orbit, feasible spaceports include Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida (NASA), Guyana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guyana (ESA), Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (RKA) and the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at Tanegashima, Japan (JAXA), among others.

A review of cost assessment and related contacts for launch scenarios at each of these sites will be included in the Lunchsat Launch Report, to be released in the New Year.