AMSAT NextGen program progress

Alex Harvilchuck, N3NP, has provided an update on progress with the AMSAT NextGen program.

Alex posted the following to the AMSAT Bulletin Board:

Just to give everyone a little update on how the AMSAT NextGen Program is doing at Binghamton University..

(a) CONTROL & EXPERIMENT SYSTEMS

• The Systems Engineering students are doing well analyzing the ARISSat documentation and will be scheduling meetings with the primary AMSAT engineering contact to discuss documentation questions.

• Identified Design Changes Needing to Occur for NextGen:

• The Control/Safety Timer needs to be adapted to conform with the CubeSat deployment switch standard.
• Consolidation of Camera functionality into a separate camera payload board (functionality is currently spread across a number of boards in the stack).

(b) RF SYSTEMS

• The Systems Engineering students are doing well analyzing the ARISSat documentation and will be scheduling meetings with the primary AMSAT engineering contact to discuss documentation questions.

• Identified Design Changes Needing to Occur for NextGen:

• Antenna design choice - single dual-band vs dual mono-band.
• New RF container design needed.

(c) POWER & STRUCTURE SYSTEMS

• The Systems Engineering students are doing well analyzing the ARISSat documentation and will be scheduling meetings with the primary AMSAT engineering contact to discuss documentation questions.

• The Hardware Engineering students have been busy creating a preliminary design for solar panel deployment and use of supercapacitors to replace the battery. A Preliminary Design Review is being scheduled in mid-November with the AMSAT Engineering Team.

• Identified Design Changes Needing to Occur for NextGen:

• Replace Battery with modular stacks of Supercapacitors in parallel to the Solar Panels.
• Shrink ICB (Interconnect Board) to fit within CubeSat frame.
• Reduce PSU footprint by moving camera power function to a Camera Payload Board (CPB).
• Slight PSU voltage supply design change.
• Remove test/program load functionality from ICB to external test board (XTB) via standard CubeSat & PPOD maintenance ports (per CubeSat spec.)

We are still on-target to have an engineering model ready for the AMSAT table at the 2010 Dayton Hamvention with readiness for launch later in 2010.

Alex Harvilchuck, N3NP
NextGen Program Manager

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