NANO SATELLITIES USING ARDUINO – “ THE NEW PHASE IN SPACE EXPLORATION”

BY R.SRIDHAR R.SUDHIR KUMAR PERI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,CHENNAI

WHAT ? & WHY ?

What ?

Nano Satellites - Artificial satellities of low mass and small size usually under 500Kg are termed as Nano satellites

Ardusat (Nano Satellites) - It is an open source arduino based Nano Satellite platform based on cubesat standard

CubeSat – It is basically a miniaturized satellite for space reasearcch whose dimension are 10cm X 10cm X 10cm and which weigh less than 1.33Kg.

Why ?

Low in manufacturing cost and launching cost

Manufacturing time is less

Can do our personal experiments

Open-Source platform with large community support

ARDUSAT & 1U CUBESAT

EQUATION OF LIFE !

( Arduino + sensors ) + ( Structure ) + ( Antenna ) + ( Solar Panels ) = ArduSat

Arduino is the brain of the satellite if any little bit of malfunction well lead to the failure of the mission,

Sensor are the various components required for the mission and for the space lab eperiments

The microcontroller is programmed using c/c++ AVR./Arduino

Structure which is a 1U cubeSat structure its just a cuboid with the dimension of 10cm X 10cm X 10cm depending upon the requirement we can even join one or more cubeSat to form a group to make it more efficient and acquire large amounts of information

Antenna is a simple UHF Dipole antenna for transmitting and receiving data .

Solar panels on the sides of the cube which is the main source of power for the satellite

Finally the structure of the satellite is totally covered with lots and lots of aluminum foil for protection against high radiation and heat which might lead to failure of a small component , eventually leading to failure of the entire mission

PING OUT - PONG BACK

PING OUT Each and every data to be sent are sent in the form of small packets. Everything can be done with the help of IDE – Integrated Development Environment. 1) Open a channel to transmit 2) Open the pipe and the address through which we need to need and receive the data 3) type the required command to make the transicever listen for the data 4) Write the set of lines you want and open writing mode for the data to be sent through the pipes 5) Now stop listening as there is no data to be sent up By this way we send have transmitted the data.

PONG BACK Each and every data to be recived are in the form of small packets. We use the same IDE to type the receiving codes 1) Channel and pipe are already open 2) Make the receiver mode start lisintening 3) We need to first check whether data is available if so we will make the data to be received 4) Now we open the read mode and all the data sent from the earth and read and stored. 5) Now we stop listening as there is no data available to be read

HICCUPS WITH THE TRANSCEIVER

Due to high radiation and intense heat it might affect the components if the flash memory or microcontroller is taken out there is no chance of transmitting or receiving through out the mission.

There is a high danger of RAM getting flipped or to be simple problem with setting the packets up to satellite in that chance they have a security looping program which is reset the payload thus not jamming the system.

If the GPS it is impossible to locate the position of the satellite thus willl lead to the problem of sending the data back and fro

If the uplink and downlink doesn’t work or respond properly it will be very difficult to gather data as there are only limited ground station and time.

APPLICATIONS

Search and rescuing operations Stopping Piracy Navigation Maritime Surveillance Assert Tracking Illegal Fishing Border surveillance Trade Monitoring Low cost weather forecasting Disaster management Personal Communication network Space experiments Land use and natural resource management Agriculture and forestry Earth intelligence and analysis Global science and environmental mangaement

Its applications go on and on !

TRENDING AROUND THE GLOBE

In the 10 year s of nano satellite launches prior to 2014 only 75 launched

Launch rates picked up sustainably when in the three month period between Novemeber 2013 to January 2014 , 94 satellites were launched.

As of June 2014 more than 1000 satellites are projected to be launched in the next 5 years.

Due to this low cost and wide range of application new startup companies have come and are steady gaining their presence in space with in a short period of time.

Some of the companies having a good presence are , Dhruv Space , Bangalore , INDIA

NanoSatisfi , California , USA

Surrey Satellite Technologies , Surrey , UK

Dauria Aerospacce ,Munich, Germany

THE NEXT EXPLORATION HAS JUST BEGUN !

“Orbiting the earth in the spaceship I saw how beautiful our planet is . People let us preserve & increase this beauty not destroy it “ - Yuri Gagarin , First man into space