Mr. Aldous Mills Profile

Aldous Mills

at European Space Agency, ESTEC

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Publications (1)

Proceedings Article | 11 June 2021 Open Access

Mission testing for improved reliability of CubeSats

Maeve Doyle, Rachel Dunwoody, Gabriel Finneran, David Murphy, Jack Reilly, Joseph Thompson, Sarah Walsh, Jessica Erkal, Gianluca Fontanesi, Joseph Mangan, Fergal Marshall, Lána Salmon, Lily Ha, Aldous Mills, David Palma, Daithí de Faoite, Derek Greene, Antonio Martin-Carrillo, Sheila McBreen, David McKeown, William O'Connor, Kenneth Stanton, Alexei Ulyanov, Ronan Wall, Lorraine Hanlon

Proceedings Volume 11852, 118526M (2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2600305

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CubeSats are a small satellite technology that ﬁrst emerged in the space sector in the early 2000s. Their low-cost, fast-delivery design has made space more accessible, leading to a signiﬁcant increase in the number of satellites launched per year as well as the number of nations launching satellites. As an example, the Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, is a CubeSat being developed by a student-led team at University College Dublin, aiming to launch Ireland’s ﬁrst satellite. Originally viewed as educational tools, the capabilities of CubeSats to satisfy a wide range of aims, from technology demonstration to Earth observation and scientiﬁc aims, is growing as these satellite platforms advance. However, following two decades of launches, an issue still facing their success as a disruptive technology is the high failure rate of CubeSats. This is a result of the CubeSat design philosophy where, in lieu of challenging resource demands, higher levels of risk are more acceptable compared to conventional space missions. In an eﬀort to reduce these risks, this work presents an overview and highlights the beneﬁts of a testing technique, known as Mission Testing. Mission Testing diﬀers from other satellite testing in that ﬂight representative conditions are simulated during the test. This aspect of the test mitigates risks not addressed elsewhere, such as risks related to the order and duration of operations, and also oﬀers a number of unique beneﬁts, such as operations training for the Mission Control Team. As part of this work, results of a survey disseminated to CubeSat teams are presented, where the aspects of Mission Testing considered most valuable and lessons learned in light of on-orbit operations are identiﬁed. How these results have helped shape the Mission Test plans for the EIRSAT-1 mission are also discussed and overview of the test plans are presented. In addition to the beneﬁts for EIRSAT-1, this study aims to provide a resource for CubeSat teams in general, wanting to improve mission reliability through comprehensive Mission Testing.

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