The students at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated remarkable teamwork and innovation during the Spacecraft Design-Build-Fly Laboratory course. Divided into specialized teams – focused on communications, guidance, navigation and control (GNC), and vision – they simulated the satellite’s image collection and transmission processes and showcased avionics updates.
The collaborative effort culminated in a critical moment where the mechanical team’s meticulous work allowed the satellite’s solar panels to unfold, marking a significant milestone towards the satellite’s mission.
This collaborative effort, led by professors Zac Manchester and Brandon Lucia, highlights the exceptional interdisciplinary collaboration at CMU.
Small satellites, also known as nanosatellites, have the potential to significantly contribute to various fields such as agriculture, disaster response, and scientific research. However, determining their precise orbital location can be both costly and unreliable. Kyle McCleary, an ECE Ph.D. student and teaching assistant, is dedicated to enhancing orbit determination for these small satellites using visual sensing and machine learning algorithms. In this course, McCleary and approximately 30 students actively applied this research.
The students were split into five specialized teams: communications, avionics, mechanical, GNC, and vision. This organizational structure mirrors the subsystem teams found within prominent space exploration organizations like NASA.
The communications team played a crucial role in managing radio commands to and from the satellite while it was in orbit. Using a bright yellow measuring tape, the satellite’s antenna transmitted images and measurements to assist in pinpointing its location. Additionally, the team constructed a ground station to receive data from the cube satellites launched by Manchester in early March.
Rohan Raavi, a senior in ECE, was part of the avionics team. Although he humorously admitted to feeling the pressure of sending a satellite to space, he expressed his genuine enthusiasm for the class.
“It shows you how much more there is to learn and how much room there is for advancement in this area of science and engineering,” Raavi said. “The space industry has been focusing a lot on reliability because they don’t want to risk failure, meaning there’s a lot of room for progress and improvement, like what we are doing in this course.”
The avionics team was responsible for designing the satellite’s circuit boards and the necessary software for executing commands. Their work was essential for the satellite to reach space, which is where the mechanical team’s role became crucial. They ensured that all components were correctly assembled to fit into the rocket and that the satellite could power on and deploy its solar panels upon reaching space.
When Manchester joined CMU, he collaborated with Lucia to launch this course. He emphasized that informing the students about the satellite’s journey to space added a sense of gravity to the project, as it highlighted the contribution of their work to new research once the satellite reached Earth’s orbit.
According to Lucia, the students in this class began with a mission concept.
“These students are so impressive. These are mission requirements that professional engineers fail to accomplish, but they’ve created something that’s ready to fly,” he said.
The GNC and vision teams worked closely together to achieve the primary goal of the mission: pinpointing the satellite’s position in orbit. Six onboard cameras captured images of Earth and identified distinct landmarks. The GNC team ensured precise measurements by managing the satellite’s rotation, using electrically charged coils to interact with Earth’s magnetic field. Through sophisticated algorithms, the GNC team adjusted the current in the coils to control the satellite’s rotation.
Once the satellite was properly positioned for imaging, the vision team utilized cameras and machine learning to tackle the final step: determining the satellite‘s location. Images of Earth were processed through a region of interest (ROI) classifier, identifying specific points of interest such as inland lakes. This information was then used to calculate the satellite’s position and velocity.
Haochen Zhang, a master’s student in RI, was part of the vision team and shared that this was the first course where the entire class collaborated on a project from start to finish.
At the conclusion of the demo day, all the participants gathered for a team photo, arranging themselves around a table displaying their satellite. Lucia and Manchester expressed their determination to continue this class. They revealed that the mission concept for the next iteration will involve utilizing processors created by CMU spinout Efficient Computer, a company co-founded by Lucia. The development of these chips aims to equip the satellites with the ability to efficiently perform onboard computing of sensor data, setting a new standard for efficiency.
