AGGIESAT LAB: NANOSATS AND CUBESATS Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • The AggieSat Lab, part of the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, is scheduled to launch the student-built satellite, AggieSat2, as a supplemental payload aboard the STS-127 mission. As part of the DRAGONSat program, this mission is a collaboration among the AggieSat Lab, the Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Division at Johnson Space Center (JSC), the United States Department of Defense Space Test Program and the University of Texas at Austin (UT). AggieSat2 and its UT-built counterpart, PARADIGM, comprise the first of four planned missions, which aim to advance technologies for autonomous rendezvous and docking missions. In this inaugural mission, both satellites will test GPS receivers provided by JSC, after deploying from an SSPL5510 launcher, which will be mounted in the Shuttle Cargo Bay. This paper briefly describes AggieSat Lab, followed by a recap of guidance, navigation, and control solutions for two missions already launched by members of our team (ASUSat1 and Three Corner Sat). Then our Lab's current work with AggieSat2 is described, in particular the concept of operations as well as the guidance, navigation, and control solutions implemented to achieve mission objectives given extremely limited cube-satellite allocations. This mission benefits from many lessons learned on our previous ASUSat1 and Three Corner Sat missions.

published proceedings

  • GUIDANCE AND CONTROL 2009

author list (cited authors)

  • Reed, H., Perez, J., Cheek, J., Maeland, L., Graves, J., Lucas, P., ... Smith, J.

complete list of authors

  • Reed, Helen||Perez, Joseph||Cheek, Jeff||Maeland, Lasse||Graves, John||Lucas, Paul||Stancliffe, Devin||Betts, Hutson||Itkoe, Zachary||Loftin, Scott||Sewell, Rebecca||Smith, Jeremy

publication date

  • December 2009