2020-2021 Competition: Nanosatellites - Competition Winners
The 2020-2021 Satellite Design Competition invited students to design, construct and operate a nanosatellite payload system with the objective to acquire as much information from an analogue lunar nanosatellite mission. Students created a payload concept, trading off performance parameters, and passed through a rigorous review process with panels of experts within the space industry. The competition aimed to reach out to students from multiple scientific fields, including, but not limited to, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and computer science engineers. The following student teams took first, second and third place in this year’s competition.
First Place: CranSEDS Team
CranSEDS Team Report: Vicinity
The CranSEDS team of 11 students designed the cubesat Vicinity for this year’s competition. On the one hand, the project focuses on designing Vicinity to identify and analyse the environmental characteristics of the Mystery Room. The CubeSat will be hanged with a hook from a rope suspended from the Mystery Room ceiling and will be able to rotate along the rope axis for 30 minutes, taking the maximum amount of data possible. For that, payload sensors configuration will be optimised according to the room dimensions. Real mission characteristics as launch vibrations, thermal insulation, radiation, or the use of solar panels are not considered; while gravity and hook interface friction is addressed. The sources to be detected by Vicinity are thermal, electromagnetic, optical and light sources.
On the other hand, the theoretical lunar mission will be simulated using the AGI software System Tool Kit (STK) and OPENCOSMOS APP1. The payload of the CubeSat will be different from Vicinity sensors, according to the orbit trajectory and lunar landmarks locations. The CranSEDS Satellite Team has designed Vicinity not only for this competition but also taking into account design benefits on the CubeSat industry and sustainability. The design is modular, being able to adapt the 3U CubeSat to different internal configurations. This allows the CubeSat to be adapted to any payload and to be reusable, being more sustainable. Read More
The CranSEDS team featured 11 members: Gema Arboleya Martinez, Jack Bowden, Irina Bulgaru, Maria Carillo Barrenechea, Edouard Demers (technical leader), Paul Gondras, Mafred Hamburgo Fragoso, Juan Fran Lopera Zafra, Josep Marsellach Pujolràs, Joel Mura, Senthil Murugan Palaneappan, Ibrahima Mbaye, Akshay Parthiban, Miguel Ortiz Rejón, Ilias Sigalas and Toshan Vaid.
The team was mentored by Mark Muktoyuk.
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Upcoming Podcasts
The three winning teams from the 2020-2021 will be featured in a Making Leaders podcast series! Look for updates on the podcast page shortly.
Second Place: StrathAIS Team
StrathAIS Team Report: Strath2
The StrathAIS team of 13 students designed the cubesat Strath2 (Strath Square) for this year’s competition. A 3U CubeSat has been designed to provide high quality images of specified landmarks on the Lunar surface. From the Mission and Derived Subsystem Requirements, components were traded-off and selected based on their suitability for the mission. The final mass of the satellite amounts to 2.33kg, and the cost of the satellite is estimated at approximately £360,000.00, including all components and Launch and Orbit Operation Services.
Launching on 18/09/2022, it will take around 6 days for the CubeSat to be injected into its selected orbit. With a semi-major axis of 2,237 km, an eccentricity of 0.2 and an inclination of 70º, this maximised dwell time above sites of interest at the given orbit altitude of 100 km, with an average of 156.6 hours per site over a period of 90 days. This orbit also allows for sufficient communication time with the RelaySat. Read More
The StrathAIS team featured 13 members: Kirstyn Calder, Melanie Connell, Ian Hall, Jonas Hennig, Rory Hope (team leader), Ciarán Jenkins, Maria Nepheli Kardassi, Emily Logue, Patrick Malone, Rob McConnell, Eros Quintiliani, Cameron Storie and Barbora Zvolska.
Third Place: SatXTeam
SatXTeam Report: NF1
The SatXTeam of 5 students designed the cubesat NF1 – which stands for “Nifty Fridge One,’ based on an early design that resembled a fridge – for this year’s competition. SatXTeam’s mission is to design a CubeSat that will be launched into lunar orbit to detect, identify, analyse and relay information regarding the targeted Lunar landmarks while maximising the revisit times of the Cubesat to increase the quality of data collected. The team will need to take into consideration the environment of space and how it protects the satellite as well as how the information is transmitted back to the ground station.
For the EDR the team decided to use the same software as the CDR which is AGI’s STK 12 (Systems Tool Kit). This software allows us to analyze and visualize orbits around the Moon for the Lunar Mission and now the Trajectory Design. The reason this software was chosen is because it is free to use, via download or by its cloud system. It offers a basic tutorial to familiarize yourself with the software and user interface. Using this software we will analyse and visualise the direction of the satellite and help us to achieve our mission of maximising revisiting times of historical landmarks on the moon. Read More
The SatXTeam team featured 5 members: Augustus Barteska, Dan Marley, James Orme (team leader), Fiona Poda and Mohammed Siddiqui (team co-leader).