DR A. MENICUCCI. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, TU DELFT
Dr. Alessandra Menicucci received a Laurea in Particle Physics at the University of Rome La Sapienza in 2000. She then received in 2004 a PhD in Physics from the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" with a thesis on "The space mission PAMELA: data acquisition system and second level trigger".
In 2006 Dr. Menicucci joined ESA-ESTEC and worked in the Space Environment and Effects section where she was responsible of many R&D projects to develop space radiation monitors and to simulate and analyse the effects of radiation on space systems. From 2015 she is an Assistant Professor at the Space Engineering Department of the Aerospace Engineering faculty of TU Delft.
The Space Engineering Department of Aerospace at TU Delft helped develop the current PocketQube Standard in collaboration with Alba Orbital and GAUSS.
Presentation Synopsis:
‘DELFI-PQ: the first TU Delft pico-satellite for research and education’
This talk presents the design, integration and testing of Delfi-PQ, the 3p PocketQube developed by Delft University of Technology, expected to be launched at the end of 2020. The main goal of this project is to advance in the miniaturization of spacecraft technology after the successful CubeSat missions Delfi-C3 and Delfi-n3xt. Delfi-PQ has been designed by faculty staff members and students as part of the educational activities.
Delfi-PQ measures 50 x 50 x 178 mm and has a maximum weight of 750 grams. In this extremely confined form factor all the critical subsystems are included such as electrical power system (solar panels, battery), on-board computer, attitude determination and control (with 3 axis magnetorquers) and communications, which were designed to be compliant with the PQ-9 Standard. The average available power per orbit will be as low as 1 Watt, requiring a greater energy efficiency with respect to CubeSats. In order to reduce cost and streamline the design of the subsystems, standardized core elements such as the micro-controllers, power supply and protection circuitry have been developed. A similar approach was also taken for software, where a minimalist real-time operating system has been developed. This includes basic functionalities, system to system communication and in-flight software update capabilities. This approach allows to reduce the development time and to simplify the testing of each sub-system. Besides the satellite bus, a set of payloads has been developed to demonstrate the potential of PocketQubes.