Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Nanosatellites (spacecraft with mass less than 10 kilograms) offer novel opportunities for HQP training, technology demonstration, and advanced space-based research. The next generations of nanosatellites are already replacing conventional (large-scale, expensive, state-operated) satellites for a variety of private industry and academic research missions, including animal tracking, vessel tracking, communication, resourcemonitoring, atmospheric science and geophysics. It has been a focus of our research team at York to develop a series of nanosatellite technologies that will lead us to an advanced scientific nanosatellite missions in near future. In this CRD project, we propose to extend the current nanosatellite research, in partnership with Kepler Communications (referred to as 'Kepler' hereinafter) to examine an area of nanosatellite design especially for communication mission from low-earth orbit. Kepler has been working with several research partners, including the proponent in the last few years to develop a next generation telecommunication solution, using space-borne, low-cost nanosatellite as the key platform. As the first step towards the technology demonstration, the Kepler team has developed and characterized custom high data-rate transceiver suitable for space-borne telecommunication service. Next, the team plans to demonstrate the space-ground communication on-board a CubeSat-class satellite in late 2017. In long run, Kepler will incrementally deploy the satellite infrastructure to fully establish a global network.In order to establish full satellite network with as many as 40 spacecraft in orbit, several areas of satellite and mission design need to be improved. From the proposed CRD project, we are proposing to develop autonomous mission operation algorithm to achieve maximum efficiency in demonstrating multi-satellite, multi-ground station operation of telecommunication mission.