RAAF M2 Spacecraft

Deliver to the RAAF AIS / ADS-B capability across the globe using COTS AIS and ADS-B systems.

• Deliver to the RAAF AIS / ADS-B capability across the globe using COTS AIS and ADS-B systems.
• Test, validate and further develop Australian SSA capabilities by providing engineering design and performance data for the design of future passive radar systems to track LEO spacecraft.
• Develop and demonstrate software defined radio capability, which is used to support AIS and ADS-B monitoring and recording and GNSS SDR receive capability for passive LEO tacking.
• Develop and demonstrate building-block technologies and CONOPS for future ADF space capabilities. Bespoke mechanical design supporting a large deployable model, a custom UNSW Canberra flight computer, custom deployable antennae and custom software defined radio receivers.

Successfully commissioned several of our mostly in-house subsystems:

• The attitude determination and control system (ADCS)
• The software-defined radio (SDR)
• The supervisor and GPS
• The engineering camera
  In addition, we’ve deployed the first of four deployable solar arrays on each of the spacecraft using our in-house burn wire mechanisms. The graphs below show the power generated by the solar cells before and after exposure to sunlight (top), and the dynamic response of the spacecraft due to the impulse of the deployment recorded by the ADCS sensors (bottom) for M2-B.
  Operations for the coming weeks will be focused on rehearsing for the much awaited controlled separation, aka "divorce", of the two spacecraft!
  In May 2021, successfully performed on board artificial intelligence inferencing (correctly recognising hand-written characters on pre-loaded images), to test the functionality of the AI environment and pipeline using the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 edge-computer on one of the two M2 satellites.
  This is a necessary step before separating the two spacecraft from each other (currently joined, see the image) and, as the mission unfolds, coupling our AI algorithms and on-board sensors to perform tasks such as cloud detection and maritime surveillance.
  In September 2021, the spacecraft were separated.

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