Presentation Synopsis:
“POCKETQUBES AT TU BUDAPEST”
PocketQube development at TU Budapest (BME) began in 2014 and since then it boasts 3 successful LEO missions, including the first ever operational 1 PQ with scientific experiment onboard. The success of SMOG-P and SMOG-1 has provided very beneficial for the University from both educational and scientific point of view. In the fall semester of 2022 the Space Engineering MSc program started with several dozen students.
In this presentation the details of the satellites and their measurement results will be demonstrated, along with the upcoming mission, called MRC-100, a 3 unit PQ. It has a new and extended spectrum analyser and other experiments led by András Gschwindt who was the project manager of the previous satellites of BME. The mission will provide opportunity to several other universities to carry out measurements with their equipment in space alongside our own ones. The primary mission will be a wide range electrosmog measurement from 30MHz to 2.6GHz. To transmit the large amount of data gathered from the measurements, the spacecraft will feature an S-band transmitter with 30dBm output power, alongside the VHF telemetry transceiver. A redundant attitude determination and control system (ADCS) will be implemented with optical, magnetic and kinetic sensor determination and magnetic control.
PocketQube developers know that an accurate TLE is key to have early contact and more data from the remote device, but radar measurements are usually inaccurate at the beginning of the mission. To propose a solution for the problem, a satellite beacon system will also be implemented, which can provide the ground stations accurate orbit data based on GNSS location of the spacecraft.
MRC-100 can relay Automatic Identification System (AIS) packets to our ground station. This system is responsible for tracking vessels out on the sea, where the coverage does not reach the mainland because of the propagation properties of the frequency used.