CubETH is a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

project. As of 2015, it is being developed by several Swiss academic and industrial partners. The

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

is a single unit

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...

and therefore 10 x 10 x 10 cm (3.9 x 3.9 x 3.9 in) in size. Its main goal is to prove the feasibility of attitude and

orbit determination Orbit determination is the estimation of orbits of objects such as moons, planets, and spacecraft. One major application is to allow tracking newly observed asteroids and verify that they have not been previously discovered. The basic methods wer ...

with low cost

commercial off-the-shelf Commercial off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

GNSS A satellite navigation or satnav system is a system that uses satellites to provide autonomous geo-spatial positioning. It allows satellite navigation devices to determine their location (longitude, latitude, and altitude/elevation) to high pre ...

-receivers.

Aims

CubETH is a technology demonstration mission. The first goal is to prove that low cost receivers can be used for positioning in space. The orbit as well as the attitude of the spacecraft will be computed on board the satellite and send to a station on earth. The post-processing of the data will allow a first plausibility check. In order to fulfil an external validation, CubETH will be equipped with

satellite laser ranging In satellite laser ranging (SLR) a global network of observation stations measures the round trip time of flight of ultrashort pulses of light to satellites equipped with retroreflectors. This provides instantaneous range measurements of milli ...

reflectors for range measurements from ground stations.

Satellite structure

The upper face of the satellite will be equipped with four GNSS antennas. The four side faces hold the

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

s for electricity generation. A fifth GNSS antenna is mounted on one of the lateral faces. The communication antenna is located on the lower, earth looking face. The whole flight electronics is located inside the satellite. In addition to the five GNSS antennas and the SLR-reflectors, The payload consists of the GNSS receivers and the necessary hardware. The GNSS receiver chips are developed and manufactured by the Swiss company U-blox. The main advantage of these commercial chip-sets is the low power consumption and the small size. However, the chips are not certified for space applications and a

risk assessment Broadly speaking, a risk assessment is the combined effort of: # identifying and analyzing potential (future) events that may negatively impact individuals, assets, and/or the environment (i.e. hazard analysis); and # making judgments "on the ...

is part of the project. For redundancy reasons, the satellite is equipped with ten receivers, each antenna being connected to two of them.

Project partners

The Geodesy and Geodynamics Lab of

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

holds the scientific leadership and is responsible for the payload data processing software. EPFL and the Swiss Space Center (SSC) are in charge of project management and the realization of the satellite bus.

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (german: Hochschule Luzern) (HSLU) is one of seven regional, public-funded universities of applied sciences founded in 1997 in its current form. The University was called University of Applied Scien ...

develops the payload hardware and the ground station. RF and antenna-design is provided by

Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil HSR (german: Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil) or University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil is a technical university in Rapperswil, a locality of the city of Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland. HSR is part of the University of Applied Sciences of ...

. Further project partners are

HES-SO The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland (french: HES-SO Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale) is situated in Western Switzerland. It is formally accredited by the Swiss Accreditation Council. The universit ...

(academic partner), u-blox (industrial partner),

RUAG Space Beyond Gravity is the space-oriented segment of the Swiss technology group RUAG. At a total of fourteen sites in Switzerland ( Zurich, Emmen and Nyon), Sweden ( Gothenburg, Linköping), Finland (Tampere), Germany ( Coswig), USA (Denver, Tit ...

(industrial partner) and Saphyrion (industrial partner).

Status

CubETH is currently under development. The launch was planned for 2017.Raumschiffchen vom Hönggerberg
''Tages Anzeiger'' (in German)]

References

{{reflist CubeSats Student satellites Satellites of Switzerland

Aims

Satellite structure

Project partners

Status

See also

References