UNSW BlueSat CubeSat

UNSW’s BlueSat is dedicated toward launching Space Projects to push student innovation and research to pave the way to new graduates into the Space Industry.

CubeSats are miniature Satellites that are paving the way for future research and space-oriented testing and progress. CubeSats offer a relatively cheap and affordable way of facilitating university research projects that to allow space to be more accessible than currently has been in the past. They are considerably lighter than traditional satellites thereby mitigating the costs of launch, and less cheaper to build and hence are revolutionary in that they can be launched in the shortest time-frame after conception.

Our project, the power system of the UNSW BlueSat CubeSat is aimed at sustaining a Low Earth Satellite up in space for 6 months. Our sub-systems include:

- The Battery Monitoring Unit

Dedicated to monitoring, logging and sending battery data back to the master computer

- The Battery Charging Unit

Aimed optimally charging a designated battery to efficiently and quickly charge it via power sourced from solar panels whilst prolonging its lifespan

- An Embedded Control Switch Board

Reliably monitor and log the consumption of power by each system on the satellite and relay this information back to the master computer via Interrupts or master computer requests. Shut off a system instantly in the event of critical failure or when above a set value. Handle the start-up and shutdown of the satellite.

- Voltage Regulation

Efficiently step down the battery supply voltage to the standard 3.3V and 5V powerlines for the entire Satellite

- A Maximum Power Point Tracking Unit

Optimally extract power from the solar panels at different conditions to optimally charge the batteries when facing the Sun.

We at UNSW’s BlueSat CubeSat wish to pioneer our own line of CubeSats to highlight to the world the importance of this emerging Space Industry.