BioExplorer bus - Low cost approach [satellite design]

Stanford University students have successful built several small satellites already. CubeSat is advocated as another student built satellite with 100 mm cube shape (hence the name) and 1 kg mass. NASA Ames Research Center will use the satellite equivalent to size of six CubeSats for highly miniaturized autonomous cell-culture systems that can fit inside the palm of a hand. Such a system will be the payload of the first satellite of the BioExplorer project. BioNano Satellite-1 is the first satellite for BioExplorer, which will study the growth rate of yeast cells (saccaromyces cerevisiae) in microgravity. The yeast will go through ten life cycles over a period of 160 hours. The satellite will be flying in a sun-synchronous orbit, and transmitting still pictures of the yeast growth at least twice a day depending on the number of available ground stations. BioNano Satellite-1 bus is another student build satellite. Through this short cycle of satellite bus development, the student can have hands-on experiences on a complete cycle of the system engineering as well as subsystem engineering. This satellite is expected to be low cost, and can be available as a future multipurpose bus satellite.