Mission Design for the CubeSat OUFTI-1

CHAPTER 5.MISSION ANALYSISA four year lifetime is probably much more than operating lifetime of ourD-STAR payload. In fact, as explained in paragraph 5.7, the radiation environmentin the foreseen orbit is pretty hard and we still do not know neitherthe total radiation dose that can be tolerated nor the frequency of Single EventPhenomena (SEP) in that orbit for a given electronic part.Concerning the circular orbit at 350 Km altitude, the lifetime with the sameconditions (c D = 2.2 and cross-sectional area equivalent to a face’s surface) wehave a lifetime of 54 days (867 orbits) and the evolution of the perigee andapogee altitude is represented in figure 5.24Figure 5.24: Evolution of perigee and apogee altitude until the end of life forthe circular orbitGalli Stefania 49 University of Liège