1U, 2U, and 3U Structures

The OreSat bus system uses 4 anodized Aluminum frames bolted together to make a robust, lightweight, and vaguely inexpensive CubeSat structure that can be scaled from 1U to 3U. OreSat structure is compliant to the CubeSat Developer's Specification v13 and later.

STATUS: 1U ready to fly, 2U built but needs revision, 3U is CAD only.

Source: oresat-structure

Solar modules

Each 1U face of the OreSat structure can have a single solar module. That's 4 boards for a 1U, and up to 12 for a 3U. Each module has two 30% efficient GaAs solar cells, a built-in custom maximum power point tracker, and full telemetry. We get about 2 watts/module in full sun.

STATUS: v5 working, including MPPT. Needs test with cells, and minor revisions.

Source: oresat-solar

Battery Cards

Each battery card has two independent battery packs on it. Each pack is 2 Lithium Ion 18650 cells in series, so a card gives us a capacity of 7.2 V (nominal) at 5.2 Ah = 37 Wh. Our battery cards also have fuel gauging, current and voltage monitoring, and carry the inhibit and battery disconnect switches.

Status: Working, needs firmware + BOM revision.

Source: oresat-batteries

C3 onboard computer

ARM Cortex M4 on board computer, 16 GB eMMC memory, rad hard watchdog timer, deployment circuits, UHF transceiver radio, L band receiver, and OreSat Power Domain controller... all on one board.

Status: Working, needs revision for flight.

Source: oresat-c3

Data, Power, and RF
Backplane

The backplane connects all of the OreSat cards together with power, data, and RF signals. The backplane is located on the inner wall of the -X side of the structure.

Status: Ready for flight!

Source: oresat-backplane

Deployable tri-band turnstile antenna

The turnstile antenna is a four-element antenna that provides low gain, omnidirectional connectivity to the ground. The antenna has three bands: L band (1.2 GHz) for uplink to the satellite, UHF (436 MHz) for uplink and downlink, and S band (2.4 GHz) as a backup to a highly directional S band antenna (like the helical one, below).

Status: Prototyping

Source: oresat-antennas

+/- Z End Caps

The End Caps are boards that fit on the very outer surface of the + Z and - Z sides of the satellite (top and bottom). They protect the end cards, and usually have the magnetometers on them.

Status: Ready for flight!

Source: oresat-endcaps

+/- Z End Cards

The End Cards are the top and bottom most card slots. They're important, and different, because they hold any deployable antennas and connect both the the solar modules and the end caps to the backplane.

Status: Working 1U +Z

Source: oresat-end-cards

Star Tracker

This card has a ON Semi AR0134 camera that takes images of stars. The unique pattern of the stars let us figure out which way the satellite is pointing, using the openstartracker star tracking software.

Status: Ready for flight!

Source: oresat-star-tracker and oresat-star-tracker-software

Magnetometers

The magnetomers measure the Earth's magnetic field. If we know where OreSat is, we can tell which way it's pointing. 2x Memsic HMC3883A magnetometers are on each End Cap, and they're read by the uC on the ACS Card.

Status: Built, awaiting firmware

Source: oresat-acs-board

IMU

The Inertial Measurement Unit is a Bosch BMM180 that has 3 accelerometers and 3 gyroscopes to measure the satellite's movement. In orbit, the accelerometers just measure zero (!); we just use the gyroscopes to measure our spin rate. The IMU is on the ACS Card.

Status: Built, awaiting firmware

Source: oresat-acs-board

SDR GPS

Our software defined radio GPS receiver is a space-based GPS receiver based on collecting raw IQ data from the Maxim MAX2771 SDR GPS IC.

Status: Breadboard prototypes only

Source: oresat-gps-hardware and oresat-gps-software

Reaction Wheels

We use 4 reaction wheels to precisely control which way OreSat is pointed. We have 4 custom boards that control each of the motors.

Status: Prototyped, awaiting firmware

Source: oresat-acs-board

Magnetorquers

We can point OreSat by pushing against the Earth's magnetic field using our 3 magnetorquers.

Status: Prototyped

Source: oresat-acs-board

Helical antenna

The helical or high gain antenna is the spiral, single-pronged antenna on the +Z face of the satellite. It's the narrow-beam, high-data-rate antenna the satellite uses for transmitting video.

Status: Prototypes only

Source: oresat-antennas

DxWiFi

This is our long distance WiFi system: a Atheros AR9271 IC along with a Qorvo power amp.

Status: Breadboard prototypes only

Source: oresat-dxwifi-hardware and oresat-dxwifi-software

SWIR Camera

We use multi-angle shots from a short wave infrared camera to map cirrus clouds.

Status: CAD only

Source: oresat-structure

CFC Card

This card controls the CFC camera and cooler.

Status: Block diagram only

Source: oresat-cfc-hardware

Image Processing

We use multi-angle shots from a short wave infrared camera to map cirrus clouds.

Status: Discussions and prototypes only

Source: TBD

Microcontrollers
ST STM32F091 (Cortex M0)

We have a dozen or so small microcontrollers around OreSat that run ChibiOS, communicate using the CAN bus, and do all of the small housekeeping and telemetry tasks you'd expect. Some of the more demanding subsystems, like the C3 card, use a Cortex M4 microcontroller.

Status: See subsystems

Source: oresat-proto-card

Cortex M Firmware:
ChibiOS + C

We use the ChibiOS NIL real time operating system (RTOS) on our Cortex M microcontrollers, and use C to write our firmware. All with open source tools, of course!

Status: See subsystems

Source: oresat-firmware

Processors
Octavo OSD335x-SM
(Cortex A8)

We have a few large processors running Linux that do the heavy lifting, including image processing. These are the same processors used on the PocketBeagle open source single board computer.

Status: See subsytems

Source: oresat-star-tracker

Linux in Space

We run Debian Linux on our Cortex A8 processors!

Status: See subsystems

Source: oresat-linux