Design and development of KNACKSAT: First fully in-house developed satellite in Thailand

This study presents conceptual design and development of a 1U CubeSat satellite named KNACKSAT (KmutNb Academic Challenge of Knowledge SATellite). The minimum requirements of the satellite are that its maximum dimensions are 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm and a maximum mass is 1.3 kilogram. The components used are commercial off-the-shelf. The main functions of the satellite include transmitting housekeeping data through a continues wave, sending uplink commands and downlink data through radio frequencies, and taking images by using a CMOS camera. KNACKSAT consists of seven subsystems: (1) Electrical Power Subsystem, (2) Camera Subsystem (or Payload), (3) Structure Subsystem, (4) Command and Data Handling Subsystem, (5) Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem, (6) Communication Subsystem and (7) Deployment Control Subsystem. The satellite is planned to be launched into a sun-synchronous orbit in 2017. Some results of a functional integration test of the subsystems through TableSat are also presented in this paper.