BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
BEESAT 14-15
Satellite BEESAT 14-15
Spacecraft type CubeSat
Units or mass 2U
Entity name Technical University of Berlin
Institution University
Entity type Academic / Education
Headquarters Germany
Oneliner

Formation flying and multispectral camera.

Description

Perform formation flight maneuvers there. The primary mission goal is to fly a helix orbit. The satellites can be moved anywhere on their tracks to change the distance and to demonstrate different application scenarios. As part of the mission, further formations will be taken, in which one satellite will autonomously maintain its relative position to the second.

As a payload, each satellite will fly a camera system with four narrowband spectral channels, both of which may be equipped with different optical filters. This would allow for a wider range of scientific data. The camera system is calibrated radiometrically, the ground pixel resolution is 39 m with a windrow width of more than 160 km in a 575 km SSO. An X-band transmitter is used to download all generated data.

 The objectives of the NanoFF mission can be divided into the two groups of research and education. Research and experiments: The primary mission objective of NanoFF is the in-orbit demonstration of formation flight with two 2U-CubeSats. To achieve this, each satellite is equipped with a resistojet propulsion system for orbit control. For navigation, redundant GNSS receivers will provide position and velocity data of the satellites that is used to precisely determine their orbits. The payload of each satellite is a multi-spectral camera system with four spectral channels that are operated in the visible and near-infrared spectrum and is used to demonstrate Earth observation applications in a close formation of two satellites. The research activities are not aiming to sell data or provide commercial services, they are solely conducted out of research interest. It is planned to offer transmissions of compressed pictures in the UHF band to incorporate the amateur radio community into the reception of camera data. Education: TUB actively trains and educates researchers and students in satellite operations in a handson fashion. Especially, the student group “StudOps” of TUB will be highly involded into the operations of the NanoFF satellites. New amateur radio operators are trained within this group as it was done in previous missions of TUB. The amateur UHF communication system will be used for this purpose. UHF operations will be carried out by amateur licensees under their supervision using educational licenses. Part of the operations will be conducted in lectures on satellite operations. The amateur radio club “AfuTUB” of the university will be involved in technical aspects like setting up amateur radio ground stations and working on encoder/decoder software and also providing lectures on this topic to students. Technology research will be published publicly in form of papers and web articles. The tools for encoding and decoding of the communication protocol, called “Mobitex” as used in previous missions of TUB, are available under https://git.tu-berlin.de/rft/com/mobitub-2 The education of students and new amateur radio operators in lectures and as part of the student group “StudOps” are an essential part of this mission. Furthermore, education is implemented through student theses in development and operations. It is planned to transmit compressed pictures of the cameras in the UHF band to incorporate the amateur radio community in the reception of this data. Transmissions shall be announced in advance on the Internet on appropriate platforms like social networks to allow for preparation of the reception. Furthermore, the NanoFF mission provides the platform to conduct intersatellite link (ISL) experiments with the UHF transceivers of both satellites. At TUB, a student experiment is currently being prepared to use the ISL for experiments with radio amateurs. The aim is to test the range of the ISL and at the same time distribute data packets via the satellites that radio amateurs send to one of the satellites.

Sources [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Photo sources [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Keywords Formation flying, Propulsion

Related Spacecraft

Satellite Status Launcher Date Orbit
BEESAT-14 (NanoFF-A, NanoFF 1) On spacecraft (D-Orbit ION as of 2023-12-15) Falcon 9, (425 Project), (D-Orbit ION) 2023-12-01 560 km, 97.6 deg
BEESAT-15 (NanoFF-B, NanoFF 2) On spacecraft (D-Orbit ION as of 2023-12-15) Falcon 9, (425 Project), (D-Orbit ION) 2023-12-01 560 km, 97.6 deg

Last modified: 2023-12-15

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Created by Erik Kulu

Email: erik.kulu@nanosats.eu
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/erikkulu

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