System design and development of VELOX-I nanosatellite

This paper highlights the design approach, challenges, and solutions during the development of VELOX-I nanosatellite. VELOX-I was developed by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for technology demonstration of in house built camera, GPS and inter-satellite communication payloads. The mission requires innovative design to miniaturize the subsystems and extend the capability of the standard 3U CubeSat. Some examples discussed in this paper include the attitude control subsystem, the deployable optics, the piggyback picosatellite VELOX-PIII and its deployment mechanism. The satellite was launched into low Earth's orbit on 30
^th
June 2014 and various experiments have been successfully conducted. The design of structure, deployment mechanism and thermal control of VELOX-I has been validated by analyzing the satellite's housekeeping data.