Lessons learned during the development of LEDSAT from the students of the S5Lab

Abstract

The LEDSAT 1U Cubesat, a satellite roughly 10x10x11cm, was developed between late 2016 and 2021 by students of Sapienza University of Rome. The project was conceived with the help of the University of Michigan and started being developed by space engineering master students of Sapienza in a class context. The team of the S5Lab (Sapienza Space System and Space Surveillance Laboratory) continued the project and applied for the Fly Your Satellite! Programme of ESA Education, which has followed the development of the CubeSat, providing important expert support and periodic reviews. The approach brought to the students an invaluable educational experience as they participated actively in the development of a spacecraft with the typical milestones of satellite projects. The mission objectives of LEDSAT include the use of onboard LEDs for improved orbit determination, experimental attitude determination and backup light communication. Each of the six sides of the CubeSat houses an LED board of a different color (red, green, and blue) with opposite sides with paired color. The LEDs can flash a pattern predefined by radio telecommand and the light is observed using ground telescopes. The design of the spacecraft started in late 2016 and was presented at the selection workshop of the Fly Your Satellite! Programme in May 2017. Final assembly took place in mid-2020 after which the team performed functional and environmental testing between October and December 2020, with the objective of ensuring the survivability of the spacecraft in the space environment and characterization of its behavior. After successful testing, the spacecraft was integrated inside the deployer in July 2021 in Brno, Czech Republic and was launched from Kourou, French Guiana on August 17th, 2021, aboard the Vega VV19 launcher. The spacecraft is now in orbit and operating nominally, with the LED flashes having been observed several times. The development of the spacecraft was not without difficulty, with preventable issues arising through testing that imposed design changes and further analysis - the paper will walk through the project since its conception, throughout the development, the functional and environmental testing of the payload and at system level, emphasizing the lessons learned by the students.