CP 3, 6

CP 3 [Cal Poly]

The Cal Poly Picosatellite Project (PolySat) was founded in 1999 and involves a multidisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate engineering students working to design, construct, test, launch, and operate a CubeSat.

Development of CP3 began in the Summer of 2005 and completed in time for the Dnepr 2 launch. The CP3 engineering team is composed of students from several disciplines including Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Physics and Aerospace Engineering. The standard bus developed for CP2 was used for CP3 to validate the concept of a standard CubeSat bus to accomodate any payload.

The primary mission of CP3 is to implement an attitude control system using only magnetic torquers embedded within the side panels. Attitude determination is performed using two-axis magnetometers on each side panel as well as observation imagers on the payload face. As with all of their CubeSats, a primary mission is also education. The project is student-run and the team aims to design, build, launch and operate a satellite with as much student involvement as possible.

The satellite was successfully deployed in orbit, but no signals were received.

CP6 development started when it was discovered that CP3 had low receive sensitivity issues. The backup flight unit of CP3 has since been modified with an LNA on the radio to increase uplink reliability, more robust software, and the addition of a secondary payload experiment built by NRL. A UHF transceiver was carried with CW and 1200bd FSK AX25 transmit capabilities.

The primary mission of CP6 is to implement an attitude control system using only magnetic torquers embedded within the side panels. Attitude determination is performed using two-axis magnetometers on each side panel as well as observation imagers on the payload face. Once the primary objectives have been met, a command will be sent to deploy the secondary payload that consists of a series of spring steel tapes. The data will be used to guide the future design of an electrodynamic tether.