UKSEDS Satellite Design Competition Part 2 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love David Sulley

Well boys and girls, I’m happy to welcome you to the follow up blog that my fan(s) were so excited about. In what feels like a long time ago, in a zoom call far far away, a rag tag team of (well rounded) undergraduates were entering the UKSEDS Satellite Design Competition. Our aim was to design a low budget satellite system to perform a simulated Lunar reconnaissance mission (see my previous blog) and survive another semester if online uni. Would we submit the Critical Design Review (CDR) on time? Would we make it to the final 5 teams? Could we even be bothered?

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Well, I guess maybe I can give you this one for free. So, what did we do last semester? First, we got to meet our mentors: Dawn and Greg Harms. Dawn is currently on the board of Momentus Space, and Greg is an Aerospace industry veteran, and their experience helped our team a lot during the semester. They advised on all aspects of the team, but we also used meetings to pick their brains on life and engineering in general. The whole team would like to thank them for their help and wish them many more years of happy marriage!

Disaster struck in the first meeting of the semester when we realised that we actually had to do some work and design this satellite system. I have to admit though, the team really pulled through and produced a great design. The payloads team designed a nice pulley system to maximise data acquisition. The sensors were mounted on a plate (as shown) which can be rotated up or down to increase the field of view of the system. The plate angle rotation, along with the z-axis rotation courtesy of the AOCS team, allow our system to survey as much of the mystery room as possible.

CDR Satellite Configuration

Not only did every subsystem produce a great design, a large part of the CDR submission was to produce an extensive testing outline for the validation and verification of the system (if we were ever to build it). This was very useful exercise for the team to see what the process of designing a system is actually like and the extra considerations that are needed. And like true professionals, we submitted with only minutes to spare.

Seeing as this CDR was due during the exam period, once it was submitted, we swiftly forgot all about it. In fact, as I sat in the pub one afternoon (possibly the morning, it was a long year) a month or so later, I received an email titled “CDR Feedback”. “Oh yeah, I remember we did that” I thought, as I cleared the notification and went back to drinking. A quick note for all my potential employers, this is a joke and I definitely spent my summer becoming “proficient” in Python. What I didn’t realise was… we’d done it! The judges and the benevolent volunteers at UKSEDS actually thought our CDR was pretty good, and they wanted us back for more. It’s the stuff of dreams really. Or nightmares, depending on how you look at it.

To answer my third question from the beginning. No. I mean yes. But really I mean maybe like 70% up for it. Under normal circumstances, we’d have to actually build, test, and use our design in the competition. However, due to COVID, we didn’t have lab access, and so we entered the Extended Design Review (EDR) competition instead. This was a graduation from the small time £500 plastic box, to the bright lights and big time of designing an actual Lunar CubeSat. The satellite had to detect, identify, analyse and relay information regarding some specified historic Lunar landmarks.

So space really was the final frontier for the team, but would our enterprise prevail? The EDR was a real pivot from the work done in the CDR. It was much more of an actual space systems engineering exercise and focused less on low level design. A few extra subsystems were added like Mission Analysis and Thermal, and we got to work.

First deriving requirements, each subsystem then performed trade-off analyses of commercial, space grade components. No test procedure was required this time, and so this meant a much more comprehensive description the subsystems, data acquisition strategy and CONOPS were required. Our CubeSat was to be deployed into a highly inclined orbit around the moon where it would image the specified landmarks for 3 months. Then it would gracefully descend before crashing into the surface, hopefully not hitting anything important. We did actually check using our poundland-esque MATLAB propagator, and it doesn’t. Probably. For more information on our design, please watch our presentation on the UKSEDS YouTube channel, or ask one of the lovely team members.

Expected Crash Site of CubeSat

EDR Satellite Configuration

With Ciaran (Scottie Pippen) and I (Michael Jordan) having already graduated, it really was our Last Dance with the team. And who would we be facing in the final? Bristol, Leicester, UCL and Cranfield. As the fourth team to present, we absolutely smashed it and felt great about our chances. That was, until Cranfield gave their TWO presentations plus a video. Now I’m not saying Cranfield’s presentation wasn’t incredible, beautiful, magical, and extremely impressive, but I encourage you all to “do your research” on where UKSEDS is based and the history of their volunteers... You might find that this conspiracy holds more water than any anti-vax nonsense your Auntie posts on Facebook.

Now for the judges’ decisions. Cranfield’s name came up for so many categories I thought the stream had frozen. And then…YES…VICTORY! A plucky Strathclyde team led by a guy who writes overly sarcastic blog posts won best EDR! We even came second overall, behind Cranfield of course. On a serious note, congratulations to them, their design and presentations were amazing and they deserved the win.

CHAMPIONS (as declared by David Sulley)

Well, that’s all from me. I’d like to thank everyone on the team for their amazing work throughout the year, you guys deserved the success. Hopefully you can progress STRATHcube and I wish you luck in the rest of your careers. Thanks to UKSEDS too for putting on a great competition. Having achieved every boy from Lanarkshire’s dream of coming second in an extracurricular University competition, I’m now going to retire from all academic activities. Do not contact me unless it’s with an offer of a reasonably priced PS5. Unless, of course, you are a prospective employer of mine. In which case, please hire me. I’ll even make the tea.

Yours sincerely, faithfully, and truly

Rory

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