University of Nottingham Student space activities to enrich the traditional curriculum

Abstract

The Educational Irish Research Satellite (EIRSAT-1) is a 2U CubeSat being designed, built and tested at University College Dublin. A FlatSat platform known as EIRFLAT-1 has been constructed to enable the testing and development of the CubeSat. EIRFLAT-1 facilitates the electrical connections between CubeSat components while leaving key interfaces accessible for test equipment and allowing for the hot swapping of components. Commercial Off The Shelf and in-house developed hardware has been tested using EIRFLAT-1 at component, subsystem and full system level. In addition, the FlatSat has been used for flight software development. This paper describes the design of EIRFLAT-1 including electrical and mechanical components and additional ground support equipment developed to assist in the testing and development activities. EIRFLAT-1 has proven to be an invaluable tool for testing and has led to the discovery of issues and unexpected behaviour with flight hardware which would have contributed to schedule delays if undiscovered until after the satellite was assembled. Moreover, EIRFLAT-1 facilitated early and incremental testing of both software and operations procedures. The schematics for the electrical design of EIRFLAT-1, which is compatible with all CubeSat Kit PC/104 components, has been made publicly available for use by other educational CubeSat teams

Update on the status of the Educational Irish Research Satellite (EIRSAT-1)

“…The EQM parts of EIRSAT-1 were initially assembled on a FlatSat [7], in which the satellite is assembled on a large motherboard or series of motherboards laid out horizontally. Over the course of several months, the FlatSat was fully populated, as COTS components were received and acceptance tested, and as custom-built payloads were developed, tested and space qualified [8,9,10].…”