BEESAT-5/-6/-7/-8
Project Facts
Project Name | Applied curricula in space exploration and intelligent robotic systems |
Contact Person | Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Briess & Dipl.-Ing. Dmitriy Ostroverkhov |
Distributed satellite systems like mega-constellations, formation flying or swarms enable novel applications, but they are only economical when using highly miniaturized but still high-capacity spacecrafts. Miniaturization is achieved by multifunction component assembly, the utilization of commercial off-the-shelf parts as well as the implementation of power supply and communication buses.
Essential functions of a distributed system are the communication and the relative navigation among the satellites. At TU Berlin a picosatellite swarm mission is developed consisting of the four quarter-unit CubeSats BEESAT-5 to BEESAT-8 with a mass of 375 grams each. The picosatellites were designed fully redundant and almost complete single-fault tolerant.
The primary mission objective is to demonstrate a newly developed communications subsystem in the UHF band and an experimental GNSS receiver. Furthermore, the satellites contain a multifunction optical attitude determination sensor and are equipped with corner cube reflectors on all sides for laser ranging from ground.
The satellite swarm was launched into a low sun-synchronous orbit on March, 22, 2021. The flight results and the verified components will be used for future nanosatellite formation and swarm missions of TU Berlin. The identical flight spare models BEESAT-10 to BEESAT-13 were launched in advance on 2019-07-05 with Soyuz-Fregat free of charge by EXOLAUNCH GmbH.
Publications
- Baumann, F.; Korn, N.; Pirschel, K.; Wolf, R.; Brieß, K. (2017). A Picosatellite Swarm for Technology Demonstration (IAC-17-B4.6B.7). 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Adelaide (Australia), 25–29 September.
- Korn, N.; Baumann, F.; Wolf, R.; Brieß, K. (2017). Multifunctional Optical Attitude Determination Sensor for Picosatellites (IAC-17-C1.1.9). 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Adelaide (Australia), 25–29 September.