Space
INVENTOR

Microsatellite

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Microsatellite

Space Inventor’s customizable microsatellite is configured from our modular subsystems to enable you to tailor the satellite to your needs ranging from basic to advanced. A novel design approach reduces part numbers in the microsatellite structure allowing for the easiest and most reliable integration procedure with 360° access to internal systems. Our satellites and sub-systems rely on thorough analysis, design and test to ensure successful operation in space.

The satellite platform is designed with reliability and performance as the primary design drivers. It uses the shielded hi-rel subsystems: Batteries, power conditioning and distribution, communication and attitude control. Each system has its own radiation shielding, EMI shielding, thermal conduction path, and mechanical support. The satellite is designed not only for extreme ruggedness but also ease of integration.

Our highly iterative development process secures an easy and safe integration procedure and provides the opportunity for module interchangeability. This procedure, which is seen across all Space Inventor platforms, relies on thorough analysis as well as subsystems that are updated at least once a year.

This satellite is available for the geostationary orbit with reduced payload capacity and reduced link speed. The microsatellite is built with shielded high-reliability subsystems where each system has its own radiation shielding, EMI Shielding, thermal conduction path, and mechanical support. The microsatellite platform can be extended with deployable solar panels where the ADCS system can provide Nadir or ground tracking whilst optimizing the power generation by rotating the entire satellite across the bore-axis optimizing the solar energy harvesting.
Data
Payload mass
5-100 kg
Payload Volume
Custom
ADCS sensors (adv. option)
6-12 Fine sun sensors, 1-2 Star Trackers, 2 Gyros
Reaction wheels
4-8x WHL 500/1000
On-board computer
Redundant Cortex-M7 Redundant Zync-7030
Battery Capacity
up to 1200 Whr

Subsystems in Space Inventor’s microsatellite

 

The satellite platform is designed by using the high reliable subsystems made by Space Inventor providing high performance, low EMI and very easy integration. The basic avionics consists of four basic elements:

  • The power plant for power generation, conditioning and distribution
  • On-board data handling
  • Communication to ground segment
  • Attitude determination and control system

The satellite platform is designed with reliability and performance as the primary design drivers. It uses the shielded hi-rel subsystems: Batteries, power conditioning and distribution, communication and attitude control. Each system has its own radiation shielding, EMI shielding, thermal conduction path, and mechanical support. The satellite is designed not only for extreme ruggedness but also ease of integration. Any side panel can easily be removed and are then free with no cables attached.

Our highly iterative development process ensures an easy and safe integration procedure and provides the opportunity for module interchangeability. This procedure, which is seen across all Space Inventor platforms, relies on thorough analysis as well as subsystems that are updated at least once a year.

Power Plant

 

The complete Space Inventor power systems suite consisting of the MPPT-P3, BAT-P3, PCDU-P3 is providing an agile and effective solution. The power systems provide all functionalities needed from maximizing power input from the photovoltaic cells, storing power and providing regulated output channels to individual subsystems and on the output side an unregulated V-bat is also available.

  • Solar panels – deployable and/or body mounted
  • Maximum power point tracking (MPPT-P3)
  • Battery pack (BAT-P3)
  • Power conditioning and distribution unit (PCDU-P3)

It is recommendable to make the power plant redundant to ensure higher reliability, more performance or both.

mppt-p3

 

The MPPT-P3 is a 7-channel maximum power point tracker and battery charger module, designed to condition the power delivery from satellite solar panels to the battery in order to achieve maximum efficiency. The system consists of six variable frequency DC-DC buck converters and a single variable frequency boost-converter, that ensure optimal operating voltage for each solar cell array at all temperatures and irradiance levels. After conversion, the channels are combined through ideal diodes to minimize loss, and connected to the battery output. A configurable end-of-charge setting will stop charging at a certain voltage level in order to prolong battery life. When components reach end-of-life, a pass-through mechanism will route the solar output directly to the battery bus, whereby functionality is not entirely lost. Likewise, if the on-board MCU is disabled, each MPPT channel has a fixed voltage fallback. Housekeeping data for all channels are available through CSP telemetry. Appreciating that the solar panels are often combined with external sun and temperature sensors, each solar panel connector are equipped with a protected battery supply and CAN bus interface. The MPPT-P3 is built for durable, simple and robust satellite integration

 

MPPT-P3 Features

  • Maximum power point tracker for satellite solar panels
  • Integrated battery change management
  • 7 solar cell string input channels w. Up to 2 x 12 cells per channel
  • Ruggedized enclosure for maximum thermal performance, radiation shielding and EMI reduction
  • Suitable for microsatellites and CubeSats
  • Measurements: (L, W, H) 91.14 x 94 x 11 mm // 150 g

BAT100-P3

 

The BAT100-P3 is an 8 cell Lithium-Ion battery system designed for high battery life-time, easy integration, and safety. The battery configuration can either be 4s2p or 8s1p providing 92 Wh in nominal capacity. The BAT100-P3 is both flexible enough and sufficiently powerful for most nano- and small-satellite missions. The automatic balancing circuit maximizes cell lifetime, and the automatic heater keeps the cells operational at low temperatures. Short-circuit and over/under voltage circuits protects the cells from damage.

To accommodate different launch vehicle requirements, each module has connectors for both soft and hard inhibits. The BAT100-P3 comes in a rugged and modular 1.5 mm Al enclosure, which both acts as on-orbit radiation mitigation as well as a practical short-circuit protection during satellite assembly. An always-on ultra-low-power Real Time Clock provides timer-continuity during satellite shutdown.

 

BAT100-P3 features

  • Integrated battery module for satellites
  • 8 LiIon cells configurable for 14.4 or 28.8V at 92 Whr
  • Cell balancing and heater
  • input/output current limiting
  • Ruggedized enclosure for maximum thermal performance, radiation shielding and EMI reduction
  • Suitable for microsatellites and cubesats
  • Measurements: (L, W, H) 91.14 x 94 x 41.2 mm // 655 g

PCDU-P3

 

The PCDU-P3 is a twelve-channel power conditioning and distribution unit in a rugged, compact and modular enclosure. The system features six independent and customizable step-down converters and one boost converter, that can be connected to output channels as required. The PCDU-P3 architecture allows designers to allocate one subsystem per power channel, whereby many of the EMI issues experienced on shared power busses are eliminated. This makes the PCDU-P3 ideal for missions with demanding payloads and sensitive receivers.

To minimize thermal stresses and mitigate radiation, the PCDU-P3 is enclosed in 1.5 mm (min.) Al. The PCB is top-side only and mounted flush with the bottom of the enclosure, which reduces thermal resistance to the satellite body. With a standing height of only 12 mm and PC104 compatible mounting holes, the PCDU-P3 easily integrates with existing busses, without occupying excess stack space. All outputs have independent power monitoring and latch-up protection. Monitoring and configuration is enabled through the CSP protocol and onboard MCU. For convenience all connectors are CAN enabled.

 

PCDU-P3 features

  • Power conditioning and distribution unit for satellites
  • 12 power output channels with protection and monitoring
  • 6 buck converters and 1 boost converter with configurable voltages and routing
  • Power metering, latch-up protection, battery discharge management and protection, programmable on/off timers
  • Ruggedized enclosure for maximum thermal performance, radiation shielding and EMI reduction
  • Suitable for microsatellites and CubeSats
  • Measurements: (L, W, H) 91.14 x 94 x 13 mm // 138 g

Attitude Determination and control system

 

Space Inventor’s attitude and orbit determination and control solutions are comprised by our wide range of high-performance, rugged and modular AOCS avionics products. The range of modules spans from very small cubesat reaction wheels to large reaction wheels for satellites up to several hundred kilograms. Furthermore, we manufacture a best-in-class star tracker, integrated fine sun sensors, magnetorquers, GPS modules, ADCS computers and software which we use to configure tailored ADCS and AOCS solutions for both simple cubesats and highly advanced science satellites.The ADCS system can provide Nadir or Ground Target tracking mode and can be tailored to the specific orbit and mission.

 

  • Includes fully featured ADCS software
  • Pointing modes include: Nadir, sun tracking, ground spot tracking, inertial pointing, dual target (e.g. nadir while sun tracking)
  • Actuators: 4 reaction wheels, redundant three-axes magnetorquer rods
  • Sensors: 6-8 fine sun sensors, 5 gyroscopes, 5 magnetometers, 1-2 star trackers
  • Performance: 1 degree pointing accuracy (for arcsecond pointing requirements Space Inventor’s Star Tracker can be employed for improved attitude knowledge determination)
  • The software runs on the redundant OBC-P3

Momentum Wheels

 

Space Inventor’s microsatellite uses a fully integrated reaction wheel unit for high performance satellite attitude control  with a mission lifetime of 5 years (minimum).

The WHL-500 and WHL-1000 wheels are an integrated 3-phase outrunner permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) with fully integrated motor control electronics and software. Material for the bodies are Al-7075-T6, and the rotor is made of ferritic stainless steel while the magnets are Neodymium. The rotors are axially suspended between two hybrid ceramic high precision bearings chosen for long life and low friction in vacuum conditions. The wheel is commutated by its own internal microcontroller, which runs the control loop to control speed and acceleration upon commands from the ADCS computer.

Each wheel has a CAN bus interface with CSP making them accessible to the satellite communication bus. The wheels are fitted with basic telemetry sensors: Temperature, current, speed.

 

WHL-500 features

  • Compact, integrated reaction wheel unit for 50-250 kg satellites
  • Momentum storage: 500 mNms @ 7.000 RPM
  • Torque: 100 mNm nominal
  • Control modes: Momentum, torque, speed or motor voltage
  • Automatic motor flux reduction (FOC)
  • 3-phase Permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM)
  • Can bus or RS-422 interface with CSP
  • Rotor inertia: 636 x 10-6 kg mm2
  • Measurements: 97 x 97 x 40 mm // 800 g
  • Redundant stator windings and drive electronics

WHL-1000 features

 

  • Max nominal RPM: 10.000
  • Momentum storage: 1000 mNms @ 10.000 RPM
  • Torque: 100 mNm nominal.
  • Control modes: Momentum, torque, speed or motor voltage
  • Automatic motor flux reduction (FOC)
  • Compact, integrated reaction wheel unit for 100-500 kg satellites
  • Measurements: 120 x 120 x 45 mm // 980 g
  • Rotor inertia: 1 x 10-3 kg m2
  • Stainless steel rotor
  • Rotor inertia: 1150 x 10-6 kg mm2
  • Redundant stator windings and drive electronics
  • Voltage: 28V
  • Power: 50W max, 15W at 1000 mNms
  • Can bus or RS-422 interface with CSP

Space Inventor Star Tracker

 

Compact autonomous star tracker unit providing high accuracy attitude determination in a compact design, suitable for Micro and Nano-satellite missions with a lifetime of more than 5 years.

The star-tracker is based on advanced star tracking algorithms developed by Space Inventor engineers with more than 20 years of star tracker experience.  The embedded computer processing unit is built from highly reliable COTS components.

The compact rad-hard camera optics collect enough signal to track across the entire celestial vault with full performance up to 0.3 deg/s. The standard baffle provides an impressive Sun exclusion half-angle of only 30º.

The optical head is based on a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor with global shutter read-out, ideal for star tracking purposes. With a design based on very few components, this star tracker provides an ideal combination of high reliability and low recurrent cost.

The integrated processing unit accommodates the star catalogue and the software algorithms providing autonomous attitude determination, both during  initial acquisition (lost-in-space)  and continuous tracking.

 

Features

  • Pitch/yaw <1.5 arcsec
  • Roll < 10 arcsec
  • Max Update rate:  5 Hz
  • Time to first Acquisition: 3-10 sec
  •  Up to 0.3 deg/s (full performance)
  •  Up to 1.5 deg/s (reduced performance)
  • 60 x 60 x 116 mm including baffle
  • 30 deg (half cone) Sun exclusion angle
  • 300 gr mass
  • CAN or RS422
  • High reliability Harwin M80 connector
  • Power consumption – 2 Watt (TBC)
  • 5V regulated or 7-28V unregulated input
  • Radiation total dose tested COTS parts
  • Vibration rated for all launch vehicles
  • 5 years design lifetime

FSS-1-G2

 

The highly integrated Fine Sun Sensor (FSS-1G2), integrated in Space Inventor’s 12U satellite, uses four photodiodes to estimate the sun direction vector with a precision of 1 degree. The module has a built-in micro controller which enables connectivity to a CSP network via CAN bus and readily integrate with an attitude determination and control system such as e.g. ADCS-P3 and ADCS-R3. In addition to the sun sensor functionality, the module includes a 2-axis gyroscope and 3-axis magnetometer making it a versatile attitude sensing component. The 1G2 variant is an upgraded version of the previous 1G model which has flight heritage. 1G2 is expected to be launched in Q1 2022.

 

FSS-1-G2 Features

  • 2-axis sun direction sensor based on quad photo diode array
  • 1 degree precision
  • 55 degree half-cone FoV
  • Integrated 3-axis magnetometer
  • 0.25mG per LSB resolution
  • 0.4mG total RMS noise
  • Magnetic field direction accuracy 1º
  • Integrated 2-axis Gyro
  • Ultralow noise: 0.004°/s/√Hz
  • 5-28V unregulated power input
  • Data interface: CAN bus with CSP2.0
  • Measurements (L, W, H): 40x20x10 mm

Communication

 

The communication system consists of a VHF/UHF TT&C radio for telemetry and commanding the spacecraft. The radio system can be configured to different operating frequencies according to the frequency license obtained from ITU for space operation. A high data-rate radio in S-band (STTC-P3) can also be included in the configuration with a patch antenna mounted on face pointing Nadir.

  • UHF/VHF radio (TTC-P3)
  • UHF/VHF antenna (DMA)
  • S and X-band transmitter (STTC-P3)

TTC-P3

 

The TTC-P3 is a hot-redundant satellite telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) radio with two half-duplex VHF/UHF transceiver designed to enable robust and reliable satellite communication. The TTC-P3 is intended to be used in an antenna diversity scheme, where each channel is connected to orthogonal and cross-polarized antennas. Hereby a good omnidirectional gain pattern can be achieved, which makes signal reception nearly independent of satellite attitude. Careful receiver design provides a noise figure below 2 dB, which, combined with concatenated convolutional and Reed-Solomon decoding, ensure excellent sensitivity. Realizing that interference have proved problematic over certain regions, the TTC-P3 also features a 60 dB out-of-band rejection filter.

 

TTC-P3 features

  • 2 Half-Duplex VHF/UHF Transceivers
  • Data-rate: 4800 – 38400 kbps nominal (up to 115.200 available upon request)
  • Frequency bands: 130-140,140-150, 400-410 and/or 430-440 MHz
  • 30 dBm output power at > 50% PA efficiency
  • Noise Figure: <2 dB
  • Modulation: GMSK
  • FEC: Convolutional Coding (K=7, r=½) and Reed Solomon (RS-223,255)
  • Measurements: (L, W, H) 91.14 x 94 x 11 mm // 143 g

STTCX-p3

 

The STTCX-P3 is a software defined satellite transceiver offering a versatile S/X-band transceiver module for high-speed communication and ranging solution for both LEO and GEO missions. The transceiver is designed to work with the latest CCSDS Cat A recommendations for high data rate transmissions and high spectral efficiency. Using constant envelope GMSK or low crest factor SRRC filtered OQPSK modulation for higher power amplifier efficiency and lower linearity requirements.

The ranging functionality supported is transparent pseudo noise ranging according to CCSDS 414.0-G2 standard where the transceiver frequency-translates the uplink ranging signal to the downlink without code acquisition (i.e., non-regenerative ranging or turnaround ranging) – Eventually active regenerative ranging system will be supported The SDR is based on a powerful Xilinx Zync-7030 SoC and high-performance Analog Devices SDR front-end, the AD9361.

 

STTCX-P3 features

  • Channels: 2 receive, 2 transmit
  • 2 x S-band uplink : 2025 – 2110 MHz
  • 1 x S-band downlink: 2200 – 2290 MHz
  • 1 x X-band downlink: 8025 – 8400 MHz
  • Tx power up to 2 Watt
  • Rx noise figure: 5 dB (TBD)
  • Full duplex
  • Tx amplifier bypass function
  • CCSDS compliant (401.0-B-30)
  • GMSK or OQPSK – 9600 bps to 20 Mbps
  • FEC: Convolutional Coding (K=7, r=1⁄2) and Reed Solomon (RS-223,255)

 

 

 

Onboard data handling

 

Space Inventor provides various onboard computing platforms suitable for hot/cold redundancy solutions used for Space Inventor’s subsystems and management of valuable payloads.

  • OBC-P3 (Redundant Cortex-M7)
  • Z7000 (Redundant Zync-7030)

OBC-P3

 

The OBC-P3 is an onboard computing platform consisting of two independent ARM Cortex-M7 modules, each with separate power supply, interfacing, and storage. The dual architecture makes the OBC-P3 a suitable choice for hot/cold redundancy solutions often desired for mission critical subsystems, such as T&C, GNC, or management of valuable payloads. Each on-board computer has a large memory storage of 64GB for user data.

The application of the OBC-P3 is further enhanced by the powerful DSP functionality provided with the Cortex-M7 architecture, which makes it possible to port heavy floating-point processing such as ADCS or RvD algorithms without severe performance penalties and error-prone quantization. By default, the OBC-P3 is configured either as an on-board data handling unit with telemetry collection functionality, or as an OS-only installation for designers to write their own application.

 

OBC-P3 features

  • Two fully independent onboard computer modules in shared enclosure
  • 2x ARM® Cortex-M7 Main Processing Units
  • Memory x 2: 384 kB SRAM, 64 GB eMMC, 32 kB FRAM, 2 MB on-chip flash
  • Ruggedized enclosure for maximum thermal performance, radiation shielding and EMI reduction
  • Suitable for microsatellites and CubeSats
  • Measurements: (L, W, H) 91.14 x 94 x 13 mm // 120 g

Z7000-P3

 

The Z7000-P3 is a powerful system on a chip FPGA based payload computer with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCoreTM and FPGA logic with 125K programmable cells. The Z7000-P3 is a suitable choice as a payload computer with requirements for high data-rates and processing capabilities. The Z7000-P3 offers a broad range of interfaces including LVDS/SpaceWire and up to 1Gb Ethernet. Furthermore traditional OBC interfaces such as CAN, UART, I2C etc are supported. For standard control interface for commanding and telemetry, Space Inventor recommends using the CAN bus. For storage of payload generated data a mass memory system is included with a capacity up to 64GB.

 

z7000-p3 features

  • On-board computer based on Xilinx Zync 7030 SoC
  • Dual ARM® Cortex-A9 Main Processing Units 667 MHz
  • Memory: 256KB on-chip memory, 512 MB ECC or 1GB RAM, up to 64GB mass storage
  • FPGA: 125K Programmable Logic Cells
  • Interfaces: 2 x CAN, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x SPI, 1x RS232 UART, 16 x LVDS, 1 x RS422 UART, 4 x ADC, 1 x I2C
  • Power consumption: <1.5 W idle. Up to 20 W
  • Measurements: (L, W, H) 91.14 x 94 x 13 mm // 155 g

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