The Naval Postgraduate School SCAT++ CubeSat Program

Abstract

The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Small Satellite program provides graduate students with hands-on experience designing, building, and operating satellites. NPS’s first satellite, Petite Amateur Navy Satellite (PANSAT) was deployed through the NASA Hitchhiker program on board STS-9 5 on October 29 , 19 9 8 and operated for several years. As a follow-on project to PANSAT, NPS plans to launch the Spacecraft Architecture and Technology Demonstration Satellite 1 (NPSAT1) sometime in the future. Currently the NPS Small Satellite program is evolving to include CubeSats to further enhance the educational and research opportunities at NPS. As ongoing university, government, and commercial satellite programs are showing, the CubeSat standard is proving to be a unique platform for focused research objectives and engineering design innovation. The first CubeSat to be developed at NPS is called the NPS Solar Cell Array Tester (NPS-SCAT). The overall goal of the project is to gain experience in all phases of CubeSat construction, deployment, and operations by implementing just one of NPSAT1’s many experiments: a solar cell tester. The program is creating a baseline subsystem design for future NPS CubeSats, allowing the NPS Small Satellite program to efficiently use a standard satellite bus for focused research objectives of national interest.