Developing mission operations tools and procedures for the Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA) CubeSat Mission

Small satellites (CubeSats) provide platforms for science payloads in space. A previous Earth weather observing CubeSat mission, the Micro-sized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite-1 (MicroMAS-1), used a manual approach to both testing and commanding. This approach did not work well when it came to mission operations, as it was error-prone, stressful, and non-repeatable. In this thesis work, we designed and implemented an automated testing framework for the Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA) CubeSat, which was used during testing and mission operations; we also prepared tools and procedures for mission operations. The Mi-RaTA system presented large improvements in usability and repeatability as compared to the MicroMAS-1 system; for instance, an automated functional test could be run 38x faster as compared to a manual functional test.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Main, Erin Lynn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kerri Cahoy and William J. Blackwell.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120605

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/120605