The Portland State Aerospace Society is developing open source CubeSat systems as part of its OreSat missions. The main OreSat mission requires pointing of the satellite in order to orient its cameras, antennas, and solar cells. This is enabled by the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) and GPS systems, which are responsible for the measurement and control of the satellite’s position and orientation.
The OreSat ADCS card is a custom printed circuit board assembly (PCBA), which includes electronics for the satellite’s magnetometers and inertial measurement unit, which are responsible for measuring its orientation, and the magnetorquers and reaction wheels, which control the orientation. The OreSat GPS card is another custom PCBA with two different GPS receivers. One is an off-the-shelf GPS receiver, and the other is being used with a software-defined radio.
The main focus of this internship was to port the existing ADCS card and GPS card designs to the KiCad electrical CAD tool and to update and test them for the OreSat0.5 mission. The ADCS and GPS cards are being built and continue to be tested as firmware and software are developed for them.