Te Pūnaha Ātea– Space Institute (TPA-SI) will be launching our first satellite, TPA-1, in October of 2024. The spacecraft is a 3U CubeSat comprising a commercial platform and four payloads developed at TPA-SI. Whilst the mission team have confidence of thermal survival of the spacecraft due to experience on similar missions, no thermal modelling was performed of the satellite. One of the payloads however is a thermal monitoring unit with multiple additional sensors to be placed around the spacecraft. When augmented by the sub-system temperature sensors, the data produced by these will be a valuable resource in the development and validation of thermal models.
The objectives of the project are to gather pre-launch data from the sensors and work with the mission team to build a thermal model of the spacecraft to be validated by data gathered in the first months of operations, including design of spacecraft operational modes to gather the desired data.
Undergraduate
· Literature review of thermal modelling tools and trade off of processes
· Data capture of sensors on ground in ambient and thermal vacuum conditions
· Design of simple process validation model and test in thermal vacuum
· Satellite thermal model
· Spacecraft operations planning
None
Space Institute Lab (405.443, Lab)