Development of an advanced nano-satellite VELOX-II automated instrumentation for testing

Abstract

VELOX-II, an advanced nano-satellite, is currently undergoing the initial stage of development by Nanyang Technological University. Students were given the opportunity to be involved to design and develop various test systems as their final year project.

As the power supply is one of the most critical parts on the satellite, this final year project report will be covering the overall implementation of an automated testing system for VELOX-II power supply system. By utilising a widely known platform, National Instrument LabVIEW, as the core software to design the simulation interface and remotely controls various instruments that were used concurrently to perform the simulation. Namely, the solar array simulator, which was used to replace the solar panels on board of a satellite and it is capable of generating energy with the considerations of solar panel specifications, temperature and sunlight critical angle. Besides that, another instrument used is the electronic load which is capable of simulating various subsystems power consumption on a satellite like the communications system, on board data handling system, attitude control system and attitude determination system. Data acquisition device was also used in the simulation to measure up to 144 different points simultaneously on the power supply system board to evaluate the performance of the power supply system.

The experiment will be run based on scenarios followed by capturing and recording values of voltage and current across various points on the power supply system board into excel sheets at the interval of one second throughout the orbit of 97 minutes. Lastly, an analysis of the results like functionality of the solar array simulator, overall power consumption and power supply system efficiency obtained from the simulation will be discussed at the end of the report.