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OUFTI-1: nearly ready for space!

11/25/13

Within eighteen months, amateur radio ("ham") operators should be able to use a Liège 'CubeSat' for their digital communications and connections. This experimental relay in orbit around the Earth has been named OUFTI-1. A popular French term used in Liège, 'oufti' expresses an exclamation mixed with surprise. In the present context, it is also an acronym for "Orbital Utility for Telecommunication Innovations". The nano-satellite is a higher education teaching tool supervised by professors, and it is the result of the work of students, engineers, and researchers at the University of Liège and some of the Liège technical engineering schools ("Hautes Ecoles").

CubeSat Structure The final assembly of OUFTI-1 took place in the ultra-clean environment of the Centre Spatial de Liège (CSL), near the Focal simulators. The nanosatellite consists of a cube of 10 cm on a side (thus 1 liter) covered in solar panels. It can fit in the palm of the hand, weighs a little more than a box of sugar cubes (mass of about 1kg) and consumes as much electrical power as an electric clock (power 1W). Its complex "birth" - the assembly and integration of its miniaturised components - took place in the expert hands and under the close supervision of five 'midwives': Professors Gaëtan Kerschen (LTAS/University of Liège) and Jacques Verly (INTELSIG/Montefiore Institute/University of Liège), and engineers Valery Broun (lecturer at ISIL), Nicolas Crosset, and Xavier Werner (INTELSIG/Montefiore Institute). Amandine Denis (Department of Aerospace and Mechanics/ULg) telemonitored the operations from Singapore! Jonathan Pisane, who played a crucial role in the development of the first Belgian nanosatellite.

Wallonia, CubeSat-style

Over the past decade, a community has been developing around the world incorporating student teams who are involved in creating miniaturised space systems. The goal of this community is to approach space - a hostile and difficult-to-access environment - at as low a cost as possible, through teamwork and masters thesis. The 'CubeSat' standard responds to this educational challenge. It refers to a concept that was instigated in the 1990s by Professor Bob Twiggs from Calpoly (California Polytechnic State University) at San Luis Obispo, CA, and at Stanford University, both located in California. He demonstrated that the CubeSat concept was effective as an educational tool, and the concept then spread progressively around the world.

Various 'CubeSat' modules exist for low-cost scientific and technological missions. Today, nanosatellite missions are a global phenomenon, and there are more than 200 nanosatellites in orbit. This has enabled countries to take their first steps into space: in Europe, this is the case of Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Austria, and, in Latin America, of Ecuador. OUFTI-1 will be a space 'first' for Belgium, thanks to Liège and Wallonia! The Liège 'CubeSat' is really here and it's nearly ready to go into orbit. The first test on it conducted by ESA experts was a success. This bodes well for its planned launch in early 2015.

In the spring of 2013, ESA launched the new "Fly You Satellite! (FYS)" program, looking for CubeSats at an advanced state of development. The ULg's OUFTI-1 emerged as one of the winners together with four other projects from Europe and one from Canada. Specifications, voluminous documentation (including an integration procedure), and an instruction manual had to be provided in a short period of time, and a flight model had to be provided in the same way as for 'big' satellites. The integration of OUFTI-1 was completed on 24 October 2013. A fully assembled OUFTI-1 was presented on 6 November to the ESA examiners as part of a first Test Readiness Review (TRR), which opens the way to extensive testing, first in ambient conditions at CSL-ULg, and then in space conditions (in vacuum and extreme temperatures) at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk (The Netherlands). The TRR consists of seeing whether the quality and performance of the ULg's CubeSat meets the strict ESA and FYS requirements. The examiners made recommendations to guarantee the reliability of the nanosatellite.

Six years in the making

The fully-assembled ULg's 'CubeSat' flight model is the result of a period of development that lasted more than six years and involved around fifty students (see their photos at http://www.oufti.ulg.ac.be/), as well as ten professors and engineers. OUFTI-1 benefited from funding from Belspo (Belgian Scientific Policy), through the Prodex programme, and from the University of Liège for the purchase of items (such as the Cubesat structure), the development of components (including electronic cards, entirely made in ULg), promotional activities, participation in international conferences, workshop at ESA, and internships in industry. A first lesson from this project, the first of its kind in Belgium, is emerging: developing a spacecraft, even a small one, takes a lot of time, and requires a lot of good will, perseverance, patience, and efforts, in from the students and researchers who were discovering and learning about the challenges and constraints of space engineering.

'The idea of an original mission for a CubeSat made in ULg (and thus Liège!) was discussed on 18 September 2007 during a late-afternoon 45-minute telephone call with Luc Halbach, a passionate ham-radio operator and at that time an engineer at Spacebel, and I made the decision to proceed right there, without any funding in sight' recalls Jacques Verly. A small-satellite initiative for Liège began in 2005 with the idea of the LEODIUM project (Lancement En Orbite de Démonstrations Innovantes d'une Université Multidisciplinaire) - from the Latin name for Liège - conceived within the Liège Espace association, a space think-tank bringing together the ULg laboratories and local companies with an interest for space science and technology. The development of a nanosatellite was conceived as an active teaching tool and a means of raising public awareness of educational tools available at the ULg in areospace engineering andspace science, two domains for which the ULg is a leader in the French community of Belgium. Yet, it was still necessary to find a project with an international reach and visibility. This is precisely what the OUFTI-1 acieved over the last six years.

An unprecedented mission for amateur-radio operators

OUFTI-1 aims to experiment in space with new D-STAR (Digital-Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) protocol and technology. The community of amateur-radio ("ham") operators around the world is expecting great things from experiments with a D-STAR digital radio communications space relay between hams, featuring simultaneous voice and digital data transmission (GPS, files, etc.), and routing and 'roaming' around the world, including via the internet. Even though there was no need to stabilise the satellite around its three axes for this mission, it was necessary to miniaturise its telecommunications equipment, develop new components, optimise its electrical power supply, develop a robust and effective deployment system for the antennas, and increase reliability all round. All this without exceeding 1.3kg of mass at launch.

OUFTI inside2 Another aspect of OUFTI-1 is its Liège dimension: learning about space systems requires cooperation between university engineers (ULg, UCL) and technical school engineers (Institut Gramme/HELMo, Electronics Department of HEPL/ISIL, HEPL/Rennequin Sualem-INPRES). The instigators and academic supervisors of the ULg/Liège 'CubeSat' have focussed on the 'by and for students' angle of the project. This is why it took such a long time to develop, even with Amandine Denis as project manager to ensure a smooth transition between successive waves of students from one academic year to the next. The ULg's Montefiore Institute has already designed and constructed a satellite control station, which has been operational for several months. It is equipped with radio equipment capable of receiving signals from any ham radio satellite in orbit, and to send signal to satellite if required. In particular, this station was designed to send telecommands to OUFTI-1 (on its future orbit) and received telemetries from it. The ground-based OUFTI-1 radiocommunication system must still be augmented to integrate the OUFT-1 D-STAR system into the worldwide D-STAR network. In this regard, the ULg already installed, about five years ago, a D-STAR repeater connected to Internet, which was the first in Belgium and the fifth in Europe. The receivers and transmitters of this D-STAR repeater are located in the attic of the Control Center of the ULg and the antennas on its roof. In addition, for six years, masters and doctoral theses have been written on the miniaturisation and development of efficient components capable of withstanding the rigours of the space environment (differences in temperature, radiations) after launch (shocks, vibrations).

Stimulating vocations and innovation

CubeSat Observation2 Professors Gaëtan Kerschen and Jacques Verly, upon whom the future of nanosatellites at Liège ans its ULg depends, enjoy both the intellectual challenges of this initial 'Cubesat' project as well as the enthusiastic dimension of innovation. But, they stress that 'the ultimate stage of the finalisation of the nanosatellite would not have been achieved without getting help from a small team of research engineers who are capable of quickly finding solution to the many problems that crop up at the last minute. Within the Faculty of Applied Sciences, the idea of having a satellite made in ULg - OUFTI-1 - in orbit by early 2015 now appears quite realistic. Currently, there is information from ESA regarding the means by which OUFTI-1 will reach orbit and what this orbit will be.

Already, and before it is in orbit, the Liège 'Cubesat' has kept all its promises, by succeeding on two front. First, it has inspired the careers of several students who are now actively working in the space sector. Three examples of graduate engineers should be mentioned, who owe their professional careers to the OUFTI-1 odyssey. Philippe Ledent, who was the first to work on the electrical power supply aboard OUFTI-1, now works for the leading Belgian company in the satellite industry, specialising in electrical power supplies. Vincent Beukelaers was involved in the OUFTI-1 mission analysis, and now works in California: he was involved in the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Phonesat mission, and he is now with the new Planet Labs company, which will launch a range of observational nanosatellites. Julian Tallineau, who studied the payload of the successor of OUFTI-1 - which was intially called OUFTI-2, but is now called SIMBA - is a satellite systems engineer for QinetiQ Space and is preparing the Proba-3 mission, which involves the flight in formation two satellites.

The development of OUFTI-1 also gave a major boost to the 'Cubesat' phenomenon in Belgium. Other projects have taken shape. In Belgium, OUFTI-1 has given a real impetus to research and technological innovation.

The ULg's expertise is now solicited for new scientific and technological missions funded by Belspo:
- PICASSO (Pathfinder Instruments for Cloux & Aerosol Spaceborne Observations), from the Institut d’Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique, has a spectro-imager that analyses, from space, the chemical components in the atmosphere;
- Qarman, for the VKI (Von Karman Institute), as a demonstration of the study of atmospheric re-entry;
- SIMBA (Sun-Earth Imbalance), from the Institut Royal Météorologique, has a high technology radiometer to measure the impact of solar rays on the Earth.

A thriving industry and pollution in orbit

In terms of 'Cubesat' missions, there's no shortage of ideas! A breath of fresh air is blowing through the space industry.

Nanosatellites weighing between 1 and 10 kg are more and more sophisticated and they take shape with the support of space agencies, research bodies, universities, and polytechnic institutes. Germany, Italy, and Denmark are leading the way in Europe. first cubeSat1 The group of countries involved in nanosatellite developments keeps expanding throughout, the world. At the end of this year, around 50 nanosatellites will be placed into orbit during two launches in Virginia (USA) and in the south of Russia. Without a doubt, the most ambitious project is the QB50 project, with the deployment into orbit of an international constellation including up to 50 double CubeSats (i.e. two one-unit CubeSat attached at one face), designed and constructed by groups of professors and students from the five continents. Each nanosatellite, combines instruments for in situ measurements of the thermosphere, i.e. the region above our heads between 90 and 300km.

The QB50 initiative and its development at VKI is due to Jean Muylaert, its director. This QB50 constellation is the first joint use, on the global scale, of 'low cost' ‘CubeSat’ missions combining the educational context and scientific purposes. It will enable science to be conducted in a network, and to validate experimental concepts. It faces the difficulty of finding an inexpensive launch mechanism, which would normally be financed by the European Commission. At his point, it seems that a launch will not happen before 2016. Given its low cost and certain amount of flexibility, 'CubeSat' technology lends itself well to the multiplication of specialised nanosatellites to successfully collect data and conduct regular observations.

In the United States, NASA and DOD (Department of Defense), and, in Japan, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), encourage universities, academies, and higher-learning institutions to experiment with 'CubeSats' in orbit. Astronauts even launch them from the ISS (International Space Station) for space activities with an educational flavor. Companies have been developed to commercialise 'turnkey' solutions and 'tailor-made' applications. In The Netherlands, this is the case of ISI (Innovation Solutions in Space), which provides equipment, launches, complete systems ... In Silicon Valley, Planet Labs is getting ready to launch in the near future, in a single launch, its Flock-1 constellation of 28 agile 'CubeSats' to take images of the Earth surface, almost continuously, and with a resolution of between 3 to 5m.

The 'CubeSat' world is therefore in a state of considerable excitment (CubeSats : for or against?). This can be seen in the multiplication and disturbing proliferation of nanosatellites ... at an altitude of between 200 and 400m. Their spread raises two questions about the future of space activities: interference with the use of increasingly overloaded radiocommunications systems and the risks posed by the presence of nanosatellite junk in space. Team OUFTI On should ensure that these minuscule objects, which become space debris, do not create problems (collisions...) with other spacecraft, particularly those with people on board. A modus vivendi has been adopted on the international level to ensure that all 'CubeSats' are launched in such a way that their orbital life does not exceed 20 years! Bold and ambitious, the 'CubeSat' approach is therefore not free of risk. Given its multidisciplinary nature on the global scale, the approcah presents real advantages which can meet the challenges of exploring and exploiting space.