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Present: Caleb Adams, Nick Hollis, David Cotten, Deepak Mishra, Mariusz
08:30-09:15
Programmatics & project management
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- Started in 2015 with initiative by David and Caleb. Received funding from NASA to create a mission. Proposal sent by Deepak and David to do coastal monitoring from space (hyperspectral imagery) and won the competition between several universities.
- SSRL is initiated by Dept. of Geography and Dept. of Physics, approved by Dean. The physical lab is in Physics building.
- Team size fluctuates between 30-50 people (students, faculty, summer interns) throughout the year
- The SmallSat Research lab is purely created and run by volunteering students
- There is no research credit given for undergrads now but David wishes to employ this such that people get trained
- Only paid people are summer interns – which are there throughout the summer to have continuous flow
- Faculty only work as advisors, not bosses. PM and leads work as “bosses” and run the lab.
- David teaches a course about CubeSats at UGA
- UGA does not have Aerospace Engineering department like Georgia Tech – hence SSRL is more interdisciplinary (and potentially more creative).
- The students background mainly come from Computer Science, Mechanical Eng., Electrical Eng., Advertisement, Arts – Please see Personnel Budget Document.
- You would be surprised how students from Advertisement, Arts etc. can contribute!
- They have no biology/remote sensing expert – Deepak Mishra is (faculty)
- Total cost excluding launch costs for the 2 missions is about $200,000 to this day (mostly HW+facilities+travel).
Interviews
- They have 3 round process of interview once a semester.
- Get perhaps 200 applicants
- 50 % are immediately cut off – looking for skilled people that are needed for specific tasks that are advertised
- GPA doesn’t matter that much. Normally varies between GPA 2.0-4.0 for accepted students.
- Second and last round are more personal interviews
- 5 % acceptance rate – i.e. they select normally only 8-12 out of 200.
- First and foremost it is passion that counts most as well as team-working skills and social abilities
- It helps if they have done some significance in extracurricular activities and developed something – e.g. Arduino projects, computers etc.
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Kanna Rajan joins and discussions are about project flow, programmatics & project management
- See above for outcomes of discussion (most repeated during this chat)
- Will set up meeting between Evelyn and Caleb (both PMs)
11:15-12:00
Technical Discussions
SPOC:-
- They had their CDR with NASA 2 weeks ago (exterior reviewers necessary) – given full GO
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- Coastal monitoring of phytoplankton, HABs, sediments, cyanobacteria (estimate CO2 as well)
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- Camera:
- Built it themselves with major help from optics experts at NASA Goddard (GSFC)
- They have 433-866 nm, using only 16 spectral bands
- Hyperspectral -> works as multispectral (smart imager)
- Similar to our HSI
- Use reference of desert in Libya for in-orbit raw calibration
- They don’t have SNR calculations
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- Use a RGB camera similar to FinderScope (on SeaHawk) to georeferenced/validate the hyperspectral data (in the same housing)
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- Use MicroCam (COTS)
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- Targets:
- Mainly Georgia coast
- Deepak has in-situ validation assets
- Stations
- UAVs
- Also interested in Mediterranean
- They
- will be in ISS orbit, so cannot reach Norway
- We should coordinate what targets to look at together
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- Flight Software: KubeOS, MajorTom (https://www.kubos.com)
- Does not interface with all subsystems (e.g. NanoAvionics or those that run on CSP client)
- Interfaces with Pumpkin and some ClydeSpace COTS as well as GomSpace EPS
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- They do only Nadir-viewing imaging GSD=130 m. They can tilt using ADCS to look at different angles of same target and compare Nadir vs. tilted imaging.
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- Ground system:
- Downlink: They downlink payload data on S-band and TM on UHF (I told them why not all in one packet thru S-band?)
- We can use their UHF Ground station if we would like to (S-band TBD).
- 9600 baud for uplink
- 2 Megabaud for downlink
- QPSK à 4 bits/assemble
- Don’t have S-band yet
- $40,000 for UHF hardware and equipment only (covered by internal funding)
- (I don’t remember/forgot to ask them what Ground Stations they are using, I think they want to use NASA Goddard)
- Comms. through AX25 protocol
- Use GnuRadio currently to train with
- Will use amateur bands in UHF
- Frequency allocation took shorter than expected - since they have good contacts with NASA and US Air
- Force
- HDR vs. SDR
- Hardware-fixed bands for space
- Both hardware-fixed and SDR capability on ground
MOCI:
- Will perform target detection in coastal areas – high-performance computer
- The spectral anomalies in the water that are detected are downlinked to ground
- Two modes: 1) low spatial resolution and high SNR, 2) high spatial resolution and low SNR
- Currently doing GPU validation for use in space – they have a graduate student working on this
- Use super-resolution algorithms
- Artifically noise a set of low-resolution images -> denoise -> output 1 high-resolution image
- They can help us
- Use machine learning (neural net) to train spectral signatures to look for – the trained set is used on the payload processor (made pre-flight and fixed onboard). Match/no-match of signatures? Have not thought about updating the trained set yet. Much like remote sensing data are trained in neural network.
- This is how MOCI ties with SPOC in two missions
- We (NTNU) want to do this on one satellite and one mission
Discussion with Dr. Thomas L Mote who joined shortly:
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- Couch, “fun area”, posters
- 10-12 PCs
- Clean Room (Class 1000, ISO6 standard)
- They received this for free from Physics department
- Some minor modifications
- They do everything related to the cubesat here (except for FlatSat), incl. the optics!
- EDS area
- Tables for electronics
- FlatSat configuration (all components except for ADCS and solar panels)
- They follow Lean procedure for tools and equipment in the drawers, shelves
- Label everything
- Stickers on everything
- Put back immediately after done
- Ground station area (PC, servers, radios)
- Brainstorm/discussion area with 2 white boards
- They have a T-VAC chamber in the works (remodified pressure chamber)
- They DON’T have Helmholtz coils and ADCS testbeds – need to do this
Pictures
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Summary
- Project is almost fully student-led and student-driven, voluntarily, passionate about what they do. Student ownership emphasized.
- Faculty act as advisors. They interfere when critical (conflicts). Informal communications - sense of a team.
- Low acceptance rate. 200 applicants per semester. 8-12/200 accepted through 3 round-process interview.
- Students (incl. interns) work throughout the year (no extensive/formal holidays) - always somebody in the lab
- They will support us with both technical documentation and how to run the lab
- They will provide Clean Room and ESD documents
- Mechanical + thermal analysis
- Concept of operations document
- We should coordinate overlapping mission requirements
- Targets
- Use of ground stations
- Data processing
- SPOC+MOCI essentially works in synergy as our HYPSO mission will
- Help them with ADCS testing (HW)
- Connect them with G-NAT at NASA Ames
- Give them material from NUTS
- Share ideas on:
- Data processing chain
- Super-resolution
- ADCS
- HYPSO and SPOC+MOCI should act as inter-calibration platforms
- Evelyn should set up a meeting with Caleb regarding programmatics and project management
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