Paper Category: Technology
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Autonomous FSM Architecture for Commissioning and Differential Drag Control in CubeSat Formations
The operational success of inter-satellite laser link (ISL) missions in CubeSat constellations depends on the strict management of conflicting requirements: energy harvesting, high-precision payload targeting, and orbital maintenance. This paper presents an automated onboard mission logic designed to manage the relative distance of a two-satellite 6U in formation flight (ranging from 100 km to 1000…
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Beyond Monolithic Ground Systems: Building Adaptive, Interoperable Ecosystems for Commercial Space
Modern space missions are becoming increasingly diverse, rapidly evolving, and commercially driven. As a result, mission operators face an operational landscape where no single ground system can meet all requirements throughout the mission lifecycle. Each mission requires a unique combination of capabilities, including command and control, planning, ground station orchestration, flight dynamics, collision avoidance, and…
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Are the Clouds Clearing on the Ground? Redesigning Ground Segments for Secure Constellations
Cloud-native ground segments have played a central role in enabling scalability, flexibility, and automation for modern satellite constellations. By leveraging elastic infrastructure and cloud-based services, operators have been able to support increasingly complex missions with smaller teams and shorter development cycles. However, cloud-native design is often implicitly equated with cloud-dependent deployment, a coupling that is…
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DESIGN AND VALIDATION OF A RENDEZVOUS & PROXIMITY OPERATIONS CONCEPT
Loop’s Phase-1 demonstration defines a focused rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) CONOPS between the Space Utility Vehicle (SUV) and the Orbital Propellant Depot (OPD). Both spacecrafts will be injected into Low Earth Orbit in a polar plane, selected for frequent ground-track revisit, consistent lighting for optical sensors, and regulatory advantages that simplify deorbit planning and…
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SCALING UP SPACE PROPULSION PRODUCTION
This paper presents Dawn Aerospace’s transition from prototype-based development to low-volume serial production of advanced green propulsion systems. Over the past years, Dawn has evolved from delivering one to two flight systems per year to at least four complete propulsion systems per month, while maintaining high quality, traceability, and customer responsiveness. This transformation coincides with…
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The Roadmap to In-Orbit Refuelling for Telecom Satellites
Orbit Fab is developing an orbital infrastructure designed to provide a ubiquitous supply of propellant for all in-orbit assets, both governmental and commercial, extending their lifespan and providing the possibility of less frequent deorbiting and replacement. This vision will end the single-use paradigm for spacecraft and enable the next generation of missions based on extended…
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Catalysing Next Generation Solutions with Scalable Model-Based Software
Small satellite missions increasingly rely on software-defined payloads, onboard data processing, and automated mission operations, to meet performance, responsiveness, and cost constraints. In practice, payload software development, integration and test (I&T) and operations are often supported by fragmented toolchains spanning flight, ground, and payload domains, leading to duplicated effort, reduced reusability and increased operational risk.…
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A Distributed Data Center in Space (DCiS) Architecture for Small Satellites
Space-based data processing has emerged as a critical need for modern satellite missions in Earth observation, communications, and defense. We present DCiS (Data Center in Space), a distributed micro-data-center architecture optimized for SmallSat-class spacecraft. By deploying many small computing nodes across an orbital constellation and interconnecting them via high-speed links, DCiS enables cloud-like computing capabilities…
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AI-Based Navigation for Lunar Satellites in VLLO
This paper presents the design and preliminary validation of the Lunar Intelligent Navigation via Neural Architecture (LINNA) payload, a technology demonstration integrated into the SelenITA mission—Brazil’s first lunar CubeSat. The experiment is motivated by the future needs for autonomous state estimation in the Very Low Lunar Orbit (VLLO) regime, where Mascon-induced gravitational anomalies challenge traditional…