Cubesat microsatellite with a balloon
- Paper number
IAC-05-B5.3./B5.5.07
- Author
Mr. Grzegorz Niemirowski, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
- Year
2005
- Abstract
I'd like to describe a project of Astronautical Student Group on Warsaw University. We are going to design and build a cubesat type microsatellite. It will be the first entirely Polish satellite. The goal is to check influence of a balloon on a trajectory of the satellite. The attitude isn't known at this moment. It depends on the provider that will agree to put our satellite into space. Usually cubesats can be found between 600 km and 800 km above the surface of the earth but the expected resistance of very sparse gases isn't high. 200 km - 400 km attitude would be better but it's harder to find appropriate provider. For some time cubesat will fly freely at a speed of about 8 km/s. The one wall of the cube will open and a ballon will be released. It will be slowly filled by a gas. We expect that it will slightly slow down the satellite and the attitude will be lower and lower. Of course it will be very slow process. After a few months cubesat's attitude will be so low that it will burn in the atmosphere. At the moment of writing these words we don't know details of the construction. Probably we will use palmtop, GPS receiver and satellite phone to send information about position and speed to the ground station. Now the main problem is how to safely release the balloon and fill it with a gas. We don't want the balloon to be damaged or wrapped around the satellite. Another problem are dimensions of the satellite. 10x10x10 cm cube is very small and it's hard to put there all needed devices. On the other hand it makes a launch cheaper. Now we are consulting our project with professors and hope that the satellite will be ready in Autumn 2006.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-B5.3._B5.5.07.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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