小衛星的自主開發也為將來的任務提供了衛星的設計和運行能力，同時也供後進更好地理解了太空與衛星運行環境之間的關係。 ;The Ionospheric Dynamics Exploration and Attitude Subsystem Satellite (IDEASSat/INSPIRESSat-2) is a 3U CubeSat developed to provide in-situ measurements of the Earth′s ionosphere to quantify both global scale ionospheric variability and small-scale irregularities. The spacecraft is currently on-orbit, with delivery in December 2020, and was successfully launched through SpaceX′s Falcon 9 Block 5 (mission name: Transporter-1) on January 24th, 2021. Commands were uplinked to the spacecraft to replay flight data stored by the on board computer (OBC), which successfully completed this task, verifying that the OBC and flight software (FSW) are Technological Readiness Level (TRL) 9.
IDEASSat has been funded in part by the Taiwan National Space Organization and developed by National Central University (NCU), Taiwan. The spacecraft subsystems are a combination of commercial off the shelf (COTS) components, and self-developed components.
The thesis will mainly introduce and discuss the assessment and design of the flight software of IDEASSat. Key challenges include high precision pointing requirements of science payload, the limited power and downlinkable data volume, reliability of self-developed flight software, and the efficient integration of each subsystem of flight software. We present the concept of software architecture, software logic design, FPGA design, as well as challenges and lessons learned in the development of IDEASSat flight software.
The indigenous development of small satellite design and implementation capacity from the IDEASSat mission is also serving future small satellite missions being developed at National Central University, while also providing people with a better appreciation of the relation between space physics and the spacecraft operational environment.
