ArduSat
ArduSat is an Arduino based nanosatellite, based on the CubeSat standard. It contains a set of Arduino boards and sensors. The general public will be allowed to use these Arduinos and sensors for their own creative purposes while they are in space.
ArduSat is created by NanoSatisfi LLC, an aerospace company which in the word of Phil Plait has "the goal to democratize access to space" and was founded by 4 graduate students from the International Space University in 2012.
ArduSat is the first satellite which will provide such open access to the general public to space. It is one of several crowdfunded satellites launched during the 2010s.
Timeline of the project
| Date | Event |
| June 15, 2012 | Launch of the ArduSat crowdfunding campaign on KickStarter. The goal was to obtain $35000 in funding. |
| July 15, 2012 | After 30 days of campaign, the project obtained a total pledge of $106330, from 676 "backers". |
| August, 2012 | Design of the ArduSat payload prototype. |
| October 27, 2012 | High-altitude test of the ArduSat payload prototype. "The ArduSat payload prototype was carried to 85,000 feet on a high-altitude balloon. During the flight, which took a little over two hours, the payload ran sample programs, ran tests on the sensors, and even snapped some pictures in the upper stratosphere." |
| November 20, 2012 | An agreement is signed between NanoSatisfi and NanoRacks for the deployment of the first two small satellites under the ArduSat program via the NASA and the JAXA, one in summer 2013, the other in fall 2013. That makes ArduSat "the first U.S. Commercial Satellite Deployment from the International Space Station" |
| December 2012 | Design of "an engineering model of the satellite with flight-hardware equivalent components". |
| April 20–21, 2013 | ArduSat is placed as a challenge in NASA's . The objective of the challenge is to extend the functionality of the ArduSat platform, presented as "an open satellite platform offering on-demand access to Space". 22 projects were submitted to the . |
| May 14, 2013 | Release of the first version of the on GitHub. This SDK is made available for the general public to propose and develop experiments for the ArduSat platform. |
| May–July 2013 | Assembly and testing of the final version of ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X. |
| August 3, 2013 | Launch of the ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X aboard Kounotori 4 by the H-IIB Launch Vehicle No. 4 from Y2 in Japan, at 19:48:46 UTC |
| August 9, 2013 | The Kounotori 4 is captured by the ISS' robotic arm Canadarm 2 at 11:22 UTC, led towards a ready-to-latch position on the earth-facing port of the Harmony node, and finally installed on its berthing port at 18:38 UTC. |
| Aug. 30 - Sept. 3, 2013 | Along with the cargo contained in the HTV-4 Pressurized Logistics Carrier, ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X are transferred into the ISS. |
| Nov. 15, 2013 | Flight Engineer Mike Hopkins installs the Japanese Experiment Module Small Satellite Orbital Deployer on the Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform. |
| Nov. 19, 2013 | ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X are launched from the Kibo Experiment Module's Exposed Facility,. Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata uses the lab's airlock table to pass the Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform outside to Kibo's Exposed Facility. The Japanese robotic arm then unberthes the platform from the Small Fine Arm airlock attach mechanism and maneuvers it into position to release the satellites. |
| Apr. 15, 2014 | ArduSat X re-entered the atmosphere |
| Apr. 16, 2014 | ArduSat 1 re-entered the atmosphere |
Technical features
ArduSat-1 & ArduSat-X
The ArduSat project currently consists in two identical satellites: ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X.| Category | Specifications |
| General Architecture | 1U CubeSat : the satellites implements the standard 10×10×10 cm basic CubeSat architecture. |
| Computing features | Arduino-based : The ArduSat is equipped with 16 processor nodes and 1 supervisor node . The processor nodes are dedicated to the computing of the experiments, the supervisor uploads the code to the processor nodes. |
| Sensors | The Arduino processors may sample data from the following sensors :
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| Coding | The experiments for ArduSat are developed in C/C++ for AVR/Arduino, using the . |
| Communication | ArduSat is equipped with a half-duplex UHF transceiver, operating in the 435–438 MHz amateur radio satellite band. It implements Forward Error Correction and Viterbi coding based on the CCSDS standards.
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