Overview of the Naval Postgraduate School Petite Amateur Navy Satellite (PANSAT)

Abstract

The Petite Amateur Navy Satellite (PANSAT) was launched aboard the STS-95 Discovery Shuttle. The historic Shuttle flight noted mainly by John Glenn's return to space also marks the Naval Postgraduate School's first small satellite in space. PANSAT, which is in a circular, low-Earth orbit (LEO), is the culmination of 50 officer students' graduate theses over approximately a nine-year period. The satellite continues to support the educational mission at NPS and will soon provide on-orbit capability of store-and-forward digital communications for the amateur radio community using direct sequence, spread spectrum modulation. The spacecraft includes the communications payload, electrical power subsystem, digital control subsystem, and structure. This paper describes the overall architecture of the spacecraft bus, a discussion of the NPS command ground station, and some lessons learned.