The AlfaCrux CubeSat Mission Description and Early Results

Abstract

On 1 April 2022, the AlfaCrux CubeSat was launched by the Falcon 9 Transporter-4 mission, the fourth SpaceX dedicated smallsat rideshare program mission, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida into a Sun-synchronous orbit at 500 km. AlfaCrux is an amateur radio and educational mission to provide learning and scientific benefits in the context of small satellite missions. It is an opportunity for theoretical and practical learning about the technical management, systems design, communication, orbital mechanics, development, integration, and operation of small satellites. The AlfaCrux payload, a software-defined radio hardware, is responsible for two main services, which are a digital packet repeater and a store-and-forward system. In the ground segment, a cloud-computing-based command and control station has been developed, together with an open access online platform to access and visualize the main information of the AlfaCrux telemetry and user data and experiments. It also becomes an in-orbit database reference to be used for different studies concerned with, for instance, radio propagation, attitude reconstruction, data-driven calibration algorithms for satellite sensors, among others. In this context, this paper describes the AlfaCrux mission, its main subsystems, and the achievements obtained in the early orbit phase. Scientific and engineering assessments conducted with the spacecraft operations to tackle unexpected behaviors in the ground station and also to better understand the space environment are also presented and discussed.

The Extended H∞ Particle Filter for Attitude Estimation Applied to Remote Sensing Satellite CBERS-4

“…In future work, the research group intends to apply the attitude estimation method to other satellites such as the Amazônia I, from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE-Brasil); and in a cubesats scenario as for AlfaCrux [32] and SPLASH project-the Self-DePloyable FLexible AeroSHell for de-Orbiting and Space Re-entry [33]. Applications in other aerospace engineering dynamic systems will also be implemented, such as in-orbit estimation using GPS data and in aerodynamic coefficient estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), for example.…”

Special Issue on Small Satellites Missions and Applications

“…The continuous development of technologies and the reduction in launch costs have allowed small satellites to be employed in a wide range of missions. Scientific exploration [1], disaster monitoring [2], data collection systems [3], telecommunications [4], and Earth observation [5] are some of the applications that have benefitted from the introduction of small satellites, which can be deployed in large flocks of inexpensive craft, thus guaranteeing short revisit times and global coverage.…”

“…Ref. [4] describes the development and early results of the AlfaCrux CubeSat mission at the University of Brasília (UnB, Brazil), whose main payload is a software-defined radio module. AlfaCrux is also an example of an educational project that trained university students on all the stages of the mission development [5], i.e., design, integration, and operation of satellite systems, all.…”