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OPS-SAT is an ESA nanosatellite launched in December 2019. The spacecraft is open for third-party experiments, which can use almost all functions provided by the spacecraft and take full control of it. Depending on the experiment and usage of the payload, the power consumption of the spacecraft may be as small as a few watts but can exceed 30 W at full load. The peak power production lies in the same order of magnitude, which is highly demanding for thermal regulation. This article describes the preparation and execution of the OPS-SAT Thermal Vacuum (TVAC) test campaign and discusses the limitations and restrictions that had to be taken into account, such as technical limitations with respect to mounting the spacecraft inside the TVAC chamber. Additionally, the procedure of identifying a comprehensive test scenario is discussed. The general approach of TVAC tests and the results of one full test cycle are presented, and the key findings are discussed. The goal is to address the problems and limitations that were encountered during the TVAC test campaign and to provide some ideas and suggestions for improvement for the future.

The space industry is one of today’s major growth markets and a very interesting business sector for innovation, science, and technology. In the last century, the space industry has dramatically changed and undergone strong commercialization referred to as “New Space”. In addition to the commercialization, the concept of CubeSats has become well established in the market during the last decade. The European Space Agency (ESA) has acknowledged this trend and uses CubeSat nanosatellites for projects like the OPS-SAT mission. OPS-SAT uses state-of-the-art embedded systems for various tasks. These embedded systems are the key for the great mission success of OPS-SAT and provide outstanding computational power for various experiments conducted with the OPS-SAT flying laboratory. This paper describes the fundamental design of these embedded systems and discusses some of the related achievements during the OPS-SAT mission.

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