Design And Development Of RVSAT-1, A Student Nano-satellite With Biological Payload

Many universities across India are coming up with low-cost Pico/N ano/Micro Satellites that have community based missions or payloads. Most of these are solely built by students who have no or very little experience in space technology. Students are driven by sheer motivation to build satellites and make exhaustible plans, especially in the ones which are carrying a biological experiment to space. RVSAT-1 is the first nano-satellite from India to carry a mass of microbes to space in a custom-designed apparatus. Microbes were carefully selected on the basis of their presence in human gastro-intestinal tract and a ground-based analysis was done beforehand. Systems engineering (SE) methodology is adopted while making such a robust satellite, way before from the time of initiation of fabrication. The satellite is of a 2U CubeSat standard design with 10 cm × 10 cm × 22.7 cm dimensions and an overall weight of 2.66kg. The satellite is capable to operate at a flexible orbital height since it has no observation payload. It houses a beacon system that is switched on at all times which posed a challenge while designing the electrical power subsystem. A payload chamber is also incorporated with two independent systems: the microbe characteristic measurement apparatus and a deorbiting system housing an electrodynamic tether-type mechanism. The satellite is expected to stay in orbit for 1 year to carry out the microbe growth and metabolism measurements and then undergoes a deorbit phase of 2 years. Tools like AGI STK were used to model the mission and FDIR (Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery) obtained was applied to all the subsystems.