Mission and Conceptual System Design of Solar Sail Testing Cube Satellite CNUSAIL-1

Abstract

The CNUSAIL-1 project aims to develop and operate a 3U-sized cube satellite with solar sail mechanism. The primary mission is to successfully deploy the solar sail in a low earth orbit, and the secondary mission is to collect the scientific data for the effect of the solar sail deployment and operation on orbit maneuver and attitude change of the cube satellite. For this, the bus system will collect and transmit the dynamic data of the satellite and the visual images of the solar sail operation. This paper describes solar sail mission and conceptual design of CNUSAIL-1. The actuation/operation of the solar sail and the bus system are preliminarily designed in terms of attitude control system, communication system, electrical power system, command and data handling system, structure and thermal control system is designed.