Robust and Flexible Command & Data handling on Board the Delffi Formation Flying Mission

After a decade of worldwide CubeSat development, the Von Karman Institute took the lead, to proof the concept of a large swarm of fifty CubeSats which will be launched in early 2016. In addition, the QB50 mission has the main objective to measure the characteristics of the lower thermosphere. In scope of the QB50 project the TU Delft will develop two nanosatellites called Delta and Phi (DelFFi) which will perform formation flying experiments as well. The lessons learned of operating Delfi-n3Xt - the predecessor of DelFFi - and recommendations for future Delfi missions are outlined in this thesis. During the operations of Delfi-n3Xt the Command & Data Handling System (CDHS) performed well. In addition, a design is proposed to include flexible telemetry (FlexTLM) and a telemetry history playback functionality for DelFFi. This robust but flexible design will enable the DelFFi mission to transmit more relevant telemetry, while at the same time semi-autonomous FlexTLM configurations will reduce the time resources required of the mission operators. In the second part of this thesis, the feasibility of wireless intra-spacecraft communication for nanosatellites was investigated. An analysis of the performance and considerations of such an implementation is given, based on experiments conducted with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) modules in a representative nanosatellite environment. The on-ground experiments with BLE have proven the performance of the wireless link in a nanosatellite is excellent and the power consumption is moderate. Therefore an experiment to implement a completely wireless BLE temperature sensor on DelFFi is proposed. The wireless experiment on-board DelFFi will provide validation of the BLE technology in a space environment. This experiment will pave the way for more extensive wireless intra-spacecraft capabilities for future nanosatellites.