Flight Software Development for the EIRSAT-1 mission

Doyle, Maeve; Gloster, Andrew T.; O’Toole, Conor; Mangan, Joseph; Murphy, David; Dunwoody, Rachel; Emam, Masoud; Erkal, Jessica; Flanaghan, Joe; Fontanesi, Gianluca; Okosun, Favour; Nair, Rakhi Rajagopalan; Reilly, Jack; Salmon, Lána; Sherwin, Daire; Thompson, Joseph; Walsh, Sarah; Faoite, Daithí de; Javaid, Umair; McBreen, Sheila; McKeown, David; O’Callaghan, Derek; O’Connor, William; Stanton, Kenneth T.; Ulyanov, Alexei; Wall, Ronan

doi:10.29311/2020.39

Cited by 9 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…-Procurement of a Flight Software Development Kit, with flight-ready software components, flight heritage and customer support services, 29 -Procurement of COTS components for the standard CubeSat subsystems (see Fig. 1), many of which have flight heritage and are provided by the one supplier, 9…”

Section: Additional Methods To Improve Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mission testing for improved reliability of CubeSats

Doyle

Dunwoody

Finneran

et al. 2021

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2020

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CubeSats are a small satellite technology that first emerged in the space sector in the early 2000s. Their low-cost, fast-delivery design has made space more accessible, leading to a significant increase in the number of satellites launched per year as well as the number of nations launching satellites. As an example, the Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, is a CubeSat being developed by a student-led team at University College Dublin, aiming to launch Ireland's first satellite. Originally viewed as educational tools, the capabilities of CubeSats to satisfy a wide range of aims, from technology demonstration to Earth observation and scientific aims, is growing as these satellite platforms advance. However, following two decades of launches, an issue still facing their success as a disruptive technology is the high failure rate of CubeSats. This is a result of the CubeSat design philosophy where, in lieu of challenging resource demands, higher levels of risk are more acceptable compared to conventional space missions. In an effort to reduce these risks, this work presents an overview and highlights the benefits of a testing technique, known as Mission Testing. Mission Testing differs from other satellite testing in that flight representative conditions are simulated during the test. This aspect of the test mitigates risks not addressed elsewhere, such as risks related to the order and duration of operations, and also offers a number of unique benefits, such as operations training for the Mission Control Team. As part of this work, results of a survey disseminated to CubeSat teams are presented, where the aspects of Mission Testing considered most valuable and lessons learned in light of on-orbit operations are identified. How these results have helped shape the Mission Test plans for the EIRSAT-1 mission are also discussed and overview of the test plans are presented. In addition to the benefits for EIRSAT-1, this study aims to provide a resource for CubeSat teams in general, wanting to improve mission reliability through comprehensive Mission Testing.

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Section: Additional Methods To Improve Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mission testing for improved reliability of CubeSats

Doyle

Dunwoody

Finneran

et al. 2021

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The flight software design is then driven by the hardware architecture for which it is being developed. For EIRSAT-1, the flight software can be categorized based on hardware, as given in the following 51 …”

Section: Design Driversmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design, development and testing of flight software for EIRSAT-1: a university-class CubeSat enabling astronomical research

Doyle

Gloster

Griffin

et al. 2023

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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The capabilities of CubeSats have grown significantly since the first of these small satellites was launched in the early 2000s. These capabilities enable a wide range of mission profiles, with CubeSats emerging as viable platforms for certain space-based astronomical research applications. The Educational Irish Research Satellite (EIRSAT-1) is a CubeSat being developed as part of the European Space Agency's Fly Your Satellite! program. In addition to its educational aims, the mission is driven by several scientific and technological goals, including goals related to a novel gamma-ray instrument for the detection of bright transient astrophysical sources, such as gamma-ray bursts. This work provides a detailed description of the software development life-cycle for EIRSAT-1, addressing the design, development and testing of robust flight software, aspects of payload interfacing, and risk mitigation. The described design-to-testing approach was implemented to establish, prior to launch, that EIRSAT-1 can perform its intended mission. Constraints and challenges typically experienced by CubeSat teams, which can impact the likelihood of mission success, are considered throughout this work, and lessons learned are discussed. The aim of this work is to highlight the advanced capabilities of CubeSats while providing a useful resource for teams implementing their own flight software. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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“…The data stream is transmitted to the CPLD which converts the raw data into TTE packets which are received by the MSP430, processed and temporally stored in 128MBit flash for later service to the satellite On Board Computer (OBC). 25 The MSP430 also provides support functionality to the instrument, in particular controlling the bias voltage generation, SIPHRA configuration, management of the external flash memory and TTE data collection, storage and transmission upon request to the OBC. The operational layout diagram of GMOD is shown in Figure 2.…”

Section: The Gamma-ray Modulementioning

confidence: 99%

The environmental test campaign of GMOD: a novel gamma-ray detector

Mangan

Murphy

Dunwoody

et al. 2021

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2020

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The Gamma-Ray Module (GMOD) is a novel gamma-ray detector developed for the study of high energy astrophysical transients called Gamma-Ray Bursts. GMOD has been designed in-house and will be flown on board EIRSAT-1, intended to be Ireland's first satellite, a 2U CubeSat developed as part of the European Space Agency's Fly Your Satellite! programme. The detector comprises a 25×25×40mm CeBr 3 scintillator, coupled to a tiled array of 16 OnSemiconductor Silicon Photomultipliers with front-end readout provided by the IDE3380 SIPHRA. The readout is received by the GMOD Motherboard which provides temporary storage and support functionality for the instrument operation, including the transfer of Time-Tagged Event data to the EIRSAT-1 On Board Computer. The Engineering Qualification Model was environmentally tested following an approach tailored from the ECSS standards in early February 2020 at the CubeSat Support Facility in Transinne, Belgium. This campaign was conducted to qualify the hardware for low Earth orbit, including multi-axis vibration testing and thermal-vacuum cycling under qualification test levels and durations. GMOD was mounted on a 20kN electrodynamic shaker in which it underwent predefined sine and random vibration test profiles, demonstrating its ability to withstand the launch environment. The instrument was then thermally cycled under vacuum over

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Flight Software Development for the EIRSAT-1 mission

Cited by 9 publications

References 4 publications

Mission testing for improved reliability of CubeSats

Mission testing for improved reliability of CubeSats

Design, development and testing of flight software for EIRSAT-1: a university-class CubeSat enabling astronomical research

The environmental test campaign of GMOD: a novel gamma-ray detector

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