KEYWORDS: Software development, Design and modelling, Space operations, Satellites, Antennas, Windows, Gamma radiation, Commercial off the shelf technology, Analog to digital converters, Astronomy
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 gamma-ray module on EIRSAT-1 is a <1U CubeSat compatible instrument for the detection of high energy transient events, primarily intended for low earth orbit detection of gamma-ray bursts. The compact and low power nature of the design makes GMOD a novel instrument for GRB detection on a 2U CubeSat. The GMOD motherboard provides support to the instrument by managing a number of operation critical duties, most importantly the reliable execution of the experiment, temporary onboard flash storage and transfer of time tagged event readout to the EIRSAT-1 on-board computer. Executing these tasks is the TI MSP430FR5994 microcontroller which is loaded with a custom firmware developed for the instrument motherboard. A recent investigation into the firmware performance at fixed trigger rates proved that the firmware concept was viable for reliable detector readout. We present an investigation carried out to further quantify the performance of the firmware in a more realistic operational mode. These tests accurately simulate the rates expected by GMOD during detection of GRBs and measure performance by comparing the expected output to the actual instrument output. This is done by externally triggering the detector readout to mimic the expected rates for a range of GRB profiles and expected fluxes derived from the 4th Fermi GBM catalogue. This work evaluates the flight model firmware performance for a sample of 40 GRBs spanning a range of peak fluxes and durations.
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 by a student-led team as part of the European Space Agency’s Fly Your Satellite! programme. In addition to its educational aims, the mission is driven by several scientific and technological goals, including 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 lifecycle for EIRSAT-1, addressing the design, development and testing of robust flight software, aspects of payload interfacing, and risk mitigation. A design-to-testing approach has been implemented in order 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, have been considered throughout and lessons learned are discussed. The aim of this work is to highlight the advanced capabilities of CubeSats while also providing a useful resource for other university-based teams implementing their own flight software.
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