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Perhaps the most difficult part of writing a newsletter (in particular after months of silence) is the first sentence. With that out of the way now, let's dive into some of the recent outcomes as well as current activities in the LibreCube community. In particular, we are now getting started for another round of Google Summer of Code (see below). And be reminded that everyone is welcome to contribute to our projects at any time.
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1U Structure in Aluminum Al-6061
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Jan created the technical drawings for the 1U structure, which we sent to a local CNC workshop for manufacturing. And thus we have a 1U structure made with CubeSat specification approved Al-6061 aluminum! The repository now contains separate design files for plastic and metallic production.
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UHF Communications Board
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The ARDC-funded project to create a fully open source UHF communications system for CubeSats was kicked off earlier this year. So far the TI CC1120 transceiver chip was successfully programmed with the pyboard and STMG0B1RE Nucleo board for transmitting UHF 2-FSK and GFSK modulated signals. Now, Tamara is focusing on the radio transmit path, selecting candidate components for RF switches, power amplifiers, and antennas. These components are currently being tested and measured for design feasibility using various evaluation kits and an RF prototyping setup.
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Power Board
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Our basic power board is undergoing a revision to make it more modern, feature-rich, and performant. For this we are now working on a breadboard setup to demonstrate the new features, such as maximum power point tracking. Denis has created test modules for the MPPT (shown above) and for current measurements. He is now working on the solar side panel PCB.
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Google Summer of Code
Google has granted us three projects for this year's Google Summer of Code!
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- Diego's project is to create GNURadio flowgraphs for routing CCSDS Packets between the Yamcs mission control system and the UHF communications system through SDR hardware.
- Mihir will develop a complete Rust port of the SpaceCAN protocol: a native crate for PC that works alongside the existing Python implementation, and an embedded crate that runs directly on STM32 hardware via the embassy async framework.
- Hamza will work on a software defined radio (SDR) based ground station to receive and decode Long Range (LoRa) satellite signals with forwarding to TinyGS and optionally LoRaWAN network.
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Stay Involved
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