Nanospace-1:: The impacts of the first Swedish nanosatellite on spacecraft architecture and design

The impacts of the NanoSpace satellite program and the NanoSpace-1 spacecraft are expected to qualify highly advanced Micro Systems Technologies (MST) for space use. Furthermore, changes in systems design and the introduction of Multifunctional Micro Systems (MMS) modules reduce the mass and volume by orders of magnitude. An MMS module incorporates several features that are very capable and can work fully in parallel. The total spacecraft weight is 7kg and is constructed around innovative designs for thermal management, structure, RF-MEMS, Controller Area Network (CAN), and for Attitude and Guidance control. Several NS-1 subsystems are designed with innovative MST technologies. Many features are packed into 3D-Multichip Modules (3D-MCM). A new systems design philosophy with a high level of autonomy and distributed intelligence is used to increase the spacecraft modularity. In order to determine what conclusions that are NSI specific and which that are general in nature, a design method is studied and applied to the MMS modules. The traditional bottom-up approach to system assembly, where each device is separately developed, verified, and qualified is abandoned in favor of the integrated approach, where parallel parts of devices are simultaneously assembled to from the entire system. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.