On-Board Control for Nanosatellites: Development and Application to the CONASAT Project
On-board control, INPE/CRN, Cubesat, On-board computer, OBC, CONASAT.
Since the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, the satellite industry has experienced great technological advances. Initially, the resources for satellite missions were concentrated on large commercial entities and government organizations. However, by offering a low-cost solution with a shorter development time, the Cubesat standard allowed several institutions and organizations to be able to develop missions with nanosatellites. In Brazil, the Northeast Regional Center (CRN) of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) has developed the CONASAT project with the objective of offering a constellation of nanossatellites for environmental data collection. Although the INPE/CRN has several of the subsystems required to build a Cubesat, it is still necessary to develop an on-board control software capable of the project requirements. Thus, in this work, a board control system is proposed for the CONASAT project. This system will be embedded in the CubeComputerV3 on-board computer (OBC), manufactured by ESL. In this proposal of theme are presented some results of initial tests done with the indicated OBC.