Mission Design for the CubeSat OUFTI-1

CHAPTER 2the solar panels deployment system and in the European Student Moon Orbiter(ESMO) developing the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC).The project of a nanosatellite was instead in a kind of stall until September2007 when Mr. Luc Halbach, sales manager of Spacebel, proposed the designof a CubeSat for amateur radio, equipped with a new digital technology: theD-STAR system. In less than one month, a team of students and professors wasgrouped and the design of the first CubeSat of the University of Liège started. Itwas called OUFTI-1 which is a typical expression of the city of Liège and whichstands for Orbiting Utility For Telecommunication Innovation. The project wenton and the idea of launching many CubeSats carrying scientific experimentsbecame more and more concrete: now the University of Liège has the ambitiousprogram of developing a series of CubeSats to give students hands-on experiencewith all the phases of the design and operation of a complete satellite system.A CubeSat is in fact the best mean to accomplish this educational mission: itsdesign goes on just like a traditional space mission but, being the development’stime much shorter, it gives students the opportunity of participating to all themission phases from the feasibility study to the launch.At the same time, the LEODIUM project will allow the space qualification ofsome recently-developed technologies and some scientific experiments on-boardof the futures CubeSats. In chapter 12, a more detailed description of thepossible payloads will be presented.Concerning OUFTI-1, its main goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of using theamateur radio D-STAR digital communication protocol to communicate with,and through, a CubeSat: it will be in fact the first satellite ever to use this kindof technology. If it works and it’s successfully space-tested, it will be the maincommunication system for all the next CubeSats of the Liège University.Galli Stefania 16 University of Liège