Page History

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Lab-tour

• Marco showed us their lab, where they build, integrate and test their CubeSats. Assembly on Flow Benches; which is an open, but air-flushed lab bench that gives near-cleanroom working surface. More than sufficient for most satellites. If they have optics then there will be stricter rules. According to Marco it is more about the psychology of workers and the rooms are sufficient enough for being clean from air particles.
• They do their own design of PCBs, but assembly is outsourced (sensors + FPGA).They do however make changes, fixes, replacing circuits etc. in-house. 
• Well-developed process and information/documentation sharing via online systems, for each customer such that time difference (imagine Norway-US) does not matter. On-demand and efficient, where the customer and provider may iterate real-time on systems and mission requirements.
• Using flat-sats as a common platform during integration. The flatsat can be at Tyvak; customer has remote access, or the other way around. 
• Thermal vacuum and temperature cycling is performed several times during test and assembly. Shaking is performed at other locations. 

Minutes

General

• Tyvak is also very interested in subsea-activities. Marco is very interested in knowing more about AMOS and loved the concept of the autonomous architecture, especially the AUV part. He was impressed by this concept as he sees full potential of satellite with surface validation and autonomous vehicles (satellite is not the answer alone - nor is the size - it is how and for what you use the satellite).
  
• Tyvak also has a EO-activity on-going. Have some profiling algorithmes for processing. Not HSI. (probably MSI?)
  
• Working with Fugro (Space Norway) on GPS. Assisted by ground beacons. 
  
• Mission for US-army for comms. with low gain unattended sensors (100-1000 sensors/pass). Could have UAV dropping sensors into areas, and then communicate with that. 
  
• Inter-vehicle links. Use of Globalstar. Can also go satellite--UAV. Also applies for Pathfinder(?) for Ames. They are working closely with NASA Ames.
  
• Possible launch: SSMS with Vega in 2019?
  
• Tyvak would also be able to build the payload hardware to get a higher level of integration too. 
  
• Have flown target maintaining-tracking with 3 U and 6 U for EO (applicable to our concept). Flown IR-camera. Also doing that for comms. studies. 

Discussed topics during presentation of the HSI concept

Communication: 

• S-band 2 Mbps is well achievable. Demonstrated at Tyvak.
• GS-antenna: 3.7 meter. Turn on radio at -5 deg to 180 + 5 deg, usually not a problem with low elevation angles. 30 deg is too high. 5- 8 is appropriate according to what Tyvak may achieve (S-band but easily also for X-band).
• Have a backup in the mission by using UHF and more compressed data --> it should not be a problem for us then. 

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Is a user centric company. The satellite is a tool to fullfill the project of the customer. Mission is essence, Tyvak does not sign up for experimental and "useless" missions. They want to succeed but they also want you to succeed. Also willing to invest in a pipeline of satellites & coherent mission & vision, not interested as much in only investing in one sat. 

Follow ups

1. Provide power budget
2. Energy budget and duty cycle for imaging & downlinking
3. Data budget (more clear and determined sizes) - go for more images - not the minimum
4. Do more detailed sensitivity analysis on HSI and determine asap if we can see something with it from space - Marco suggested to test & get images and relevant profound analysis from the actual camera we have now to determine feasibility and what we may expect to work and iterate on. 

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