The way we stabilise the satellite is fully passive – we use Earth’s magnetic field to do the job for us. What ensures the camera and antennae on board the spacecraft are directed towards the Earth surface (i.e. are pointed at the nadir) is a permanent magnet. This magnet aligns itself with the local magnetic […]
3D Printed Parts Arrive
Short status update: At the moment, we have three teams working on the power subsystem, the telecommunication subsystem and the attitude control system. Those groups will wrap up their work early next year. We also received much anticipated 3D printed parts. Mainly, this is the redesigned antenna deployment mechanism. It does not look like much […]
Satellite Article in the Wessex Scene
We met with the Deputy Editor of the University of Southampton student newspaper “Wessex Scene” and they did an excellent feature story about our satellite. Be sure to check it out. Together with the Wessex Scene, we are looking forward to additional collaboration in the form of feature pieces that focus on special aspects of […]
Designing the power subsystem
One group of our electronics students from the ECS department at the University is designing the power subsystem of UoS3. The subsystem comprises of all the components that will gather the energy from the solar panels, deliver it to the loads at the voltage they need, and store the excess in the batteries to be […]
Assembly Dry Run
Today, Alek and I did a satellite assembly dry run. We expect that we will soon have more printed circuit boards to place inside the satellite and we want to know how we assemble the satellite when we get to this point. Naturally, we identified some issues that we will sort out in the days […]
New Semester: 3 New Student Groups
The new semester has started at the University of Southampton and with it, 3 new student teams picked up work on UoS3: The power subsystem is currently in prototype form will be driven to completion by Josh, James, Thomas, Adran and Reece under the supervision of Alex Weddell. The telecommunication subsystem, at this point, is […]
Power Subsystem Prototype Completed
This Friday, electronics student Omar Shetta delivered the prototype for the Power Subsystem of UoS3. The power board monitors the charging level of the batteries, controls the power input from the solar cells, power distribution and protects other electrical components (such as sensors) from getting fried by potential power surges. Omar, under the competent supervision […]
Structure Manufacturing Completed
Today is a big day. Months of design work culminated in the product that we picked up from the University metal manufacturing workshop (The EDMC). Andrea Ambrosetti (machinist, in this picture on the left), Richard Dooler (designer and machinist) and Kevin Smith (boss of EDMC) really did an excellent job of producing the satellite structure. […]
Successful Antenna Deployment Test
David Shao, who is one of our volunteers, performed successful antenna deployment tests with the same hardware and mechanism as is destined for use in space. The antenna is held by a nylon wire which is then burned using a resistor (notice the smoke). The antenna is freed under its own tension. Well done […]
GPS receiver arrived
More and more things fall into place. Today, the GPS receiver arrived. This is a big deal because there is quite a process behind acquiring a GPS receiver that works in space. The first challenge was to find a receiver that fits physically into the CubeSat and is suitable for our purposes. In addition, GPS […]
