The Big Adventures of Small Satellites
“For a kid that walked in through the gates of IIST with a bag full of ambitions and dreams and is now at its gate once again, but to walk out (though, very virtually), all I want to say after two US trips, one Singapore trip, four small-satellite missions and a 14 day hotel quarantine is: it’s been an amazing journey!” —Anant (4th year, Avionics) recounts some memorable moments from his transformative small-satellite experience.
While packing for home after the first semester examination, I felt more of a disappointment than excitement. Perhaps it was the absence of an exquisite college life, which I had hoped for while coming to IIST, which left me rather bummed with the ending semester. But this also left me with an urge to do something ‘cool’ in the coming summer. In the following semester, we had a talk on the “induction program” for the small-satellite team of IIST. Sitting at the back of the seminar hall, I hadn’t had the faintest clue how this talk would turn the routes of my college life and thereafter, have me spending most of my time playing with small-satellites.
It was an ordinary day, when I was asked to present my work from the winter break after the third semester (caution: staying back at IIST during vacation, isn’t a recommendation for the faint-hearted). I gave the presentation thinking it to be just another apple in the countless-presentation tree. But about a week later, I found out that this presentation was meant as a selection for students to work on an international collaboration for a small satellite. I was selected as one of the four students to go to the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, to work on building a small-satellite (INSPIRESat-1) as part of the INSPIRE program.
INSPIRESat-1, is a small satellite designed for exploring ionospheric science in the low-earth-orbit. The task at hand was to develop a software library, for the satellite, to store data in a microSD card (yes, remarkably, many small satellites use similar microSD cards as our phones). Even with practically no experience in Embedded Systems and flight software design, the task seemed fairly simple, until I got to know that there had been many small satellite failures due to SD card malfunctioning. I wish I could say that solving the SD card issue was some brilliant inspiring moment, but in the end it came down to hours and hours of debugging. There were frustrating moments, one of which even led to me and one of my friend from Taiwan, planning to throw the SD card in a lake at the Rocky Mountain National Park, which we wanted to visit during the weekend.
When we realized a floating SD Card in the lake wasn’t the best solution to the problem, we went back to the lab to give it another try. And eventually, with the guidance from experts, we were able to solve the problem and the SD Card of INSPIRESat-1 is so far working pretty well. When we weren’t working, owing to the beautiful campus of CU, we went out for hiking, volleyball and football, which too became a part of my good memories.
This turned out to be only the beginning of my incredible journey with small satellites.
After the first trip, I was fortunate enough to return to LASP for the second time during the summer break, after my third year. This time, I had to work on two satellite projects, continuing my work on INSPIRESat-1 and starting on INSPIRESAT-4, which is the fourth satellite built by the INSPIRE consortium. Owing to my familiarity with the work culture due to the first visit, the second visit turned out to be even better.
INSPIRESat-4 falls into a unique category because it will be one of the first collaborative small satellites to fly in the Very Low Earth Orbit Region (VLEO), which is especially challenging due to the high aerodynamic drag experienced in the region. We invested hours into brainstorming and discussing the different challenges this raised and approaches to solve the plausible issues. Part of my job included working on the subsystem integration and testing for the satellite.
While working here, we wrote a paper which summarized the functioning idea of INPIRESat-4 and an overview of its various subsystems. We had the opportunity to present this at the Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Utah, which turned out to be an exhilarating experience for me.
The paper was selected as one of the top 6 finalists from all over the world and we ended up receiving the honorable mention award in the student competition. Every evening after the conference, a major space company (like Virgin Orbit, STK) would organize parties that were super fun to attend. I remember Prof. Loren saying to me in one of these parties “Hey Anant, do you know how to make socially awkward engineers and scientists have some fun? Get them drunk!”.Though the conference forced me to skip three weeks of classes at IIST, which wasn’t so much fun later on, it turned out to be one of my best experiences so far.
The next stop in the journey turned out to be at Nanyang Technological Institute, Singapore. The project was from the INSPIRE mission, about developing a payload for the PSLV fourth stage orbital platform. IS-0 had an insanely fast schedule for delivery and I was given the complete responsibility of integrating the IS-0 Payload. It all started with an email from Prof. Amal in mid-December about the payload. I spent half the December break designing one of the PCBs for IS-0 to help interface the main scientific payload to the PSLV. The board was fabricated in January and assembled with the remaining subsystems. Then, January and February were spent developing the flight software for the payload. Through the project I was able to learn about the entire system, which included PCB hardware design, fabrication, assembly and testing. This also included the software design, integration and the final environmental testing and it was the first time that I had the chance to deal with environmental testing. Getting the payload ready to survive the outer space environment, rekindled the spirit of space scientist in me.
While working on the Thermal Vacuum Chamber setup, we took a short trip to the biggest electronic market in Singapore for the hunt for DB-50 connectors. Once the chamber was set up and ready, we began the environmental testing which was scheduled to go on for 17 hours. Although we weren’t able to complete the 17 hour test due to a leak in LN2 supply (liquid nitrogen, which is very cool, by the way), the payload performed well after the hot survival and the cold survival cycles of the test.
The adventure was yet not over when the great Covid19 pandemic hit and I was ‘evacuated’ from Singapore. I had to spend 14 days of quarantine in a five star hotel, without the pool access! (Yes, it was sad).
Throughout my journey, I was lucky to have interactions with Dr. BN Suresh, who has always been very interested and conducted review meetings for IIST’s Small satellite project. One of his advice was to utilize the experience and knowledge gained from the interactions with experts at one of the leading places in the world for small satellites (LASP), to help progress in IIST’s indigenous small satellite project. The progress in SSPACE, which was non-existent when I was in first year, has been amazing. Overall through the INSPIRE program, I realized how much I enjoy hands on engineering and problem solving. These days during the lockdown, I’m working on assembling the engineering model of IIST’s indigenous PS4-OP Payload (named PiLOT) at home. Though I think, I might have taken the hands-on approach a bit overboard when I tried to use the kitchen stove to assemble a QFN IC on a PCB, since I didn’t have a hot air station at home.
Now that I am graduating after such an adventurous four year journey, I cannot be grateful enough to my professors (especially Dr. Priyadarshanam and Dr. Amal) and my institute for these amazing opportunities and the small and big moments of learning that came along the way. If it weren’t for these moments, I would’ve never known how much more there is to see and explore beyond our perfunctory college lives!
