The UoBSat team from the University of Bristol in the UK recently completed their environmental test campaign for the PROVE-Pathfinder, a CubeSat imaging payload, as part of the Fly Your Satellite! “Test Opportunities” program at the CubeSat Support Facility (CSF) of ESEC-Galaxia.
From April 1 to April 21, 2023, the students worked at the CSF cleanroom to test their payload, named PROVE-Pathfinder. The team consisted of four students who participated in the first week, and another four who joined for the second and third weeks of the campaign.
The UoBSat team was the first to perform a test campaign as part of “Test Opportunities” program that is designed to provide university students with an opportunity to carry out environmental test campaigns at the CSF, where they gain access to professional testing facilities and expert support. The ultimate goal of this program is to complement the courses received at the university with practical experience in the space domain, and ultimately prepare them to tackle the challenges of tomorrow with more confidence.
To prepare, the students had to get acquainted with and apply the same standard processes followed by professional European space industry projects. This required a lot of studying and collecting information to plan the test campaign and prepare the test procedure. The team developed a newfound appreciation for the requirements and standards that shape the workflow of satellite qualification.
During the campaign, the team encountered a few hiccups while assembling the test setup on the electrodynamic shaker during the first week. However, with the help of the engineers of the CSF, they managed to complete the vibration test successfully.
The second week brought a new challenge for the team, as they discovered that the behavior of their test item in thermal vacuum was not as reliable as expected. However, the team did not allow this setback unsettle them. They worked hard to investigate the issues and were able to find the root cause of the problem.
By the third week, the team had a better understanding of the problem and executed some temperature cycling to characterize the thermal behavior of the camera in thermal vacuum; this data will be immensely useful to the team, as they will use it to improve the thermal model of their payload device.
The UoBSat team is only the first team to visit the CubeSat Support Facility as part of the Test Opportunities program the ESA expects more student teams to engage at the CSF later this summer.