The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched an ultra powerful flight computer into space, inside a satellite the size of a shoebox. The OPS-SAT nanosatellite will be the world’s first orbiting software laboratory, available to test novel methods of operating missions in actual space conditions. OPS-SAT is ESA’s latest CubeSat - a small satellite based on standardized 10 cm boxes, which are much cheaper and quicker to build than traditional satellites.
This mission uses a ‘3-unit’ CubeSat, equipped with an Earth-observing camera, a GPS sensor and star tracker for navigation, reaction wheels for positioning, radio antennas and an optical data receiver and retro-reflectors, as well as a very powerful processor with 8 GB of mass memory.
Harnessing more flight computing power than any previous ESA spacecraft, OPS-SAT will be an inflight testbed for all kinds of promising new operational software, tools and techniques.
This low-cost CubeSat works just like an extremely complex full-sized ESA satellite in terms of its ground interfaces. This will allow research teams from companies, research institutes or even school computer clubs to gain early space heritage for new technologies, demonstrating new ways of running space missions into the 2020s, when the overall population of satellites in orbit is set to grow exponentially.
Two key elements of its design are flexibility and safety; OPS-SAT has a separate onboard computer ready to take over as needed if any experimental software goes wrong. The ground can then rapidly recover. The experiments will be run on a dedicated Linux-run payload computer – including powerful chips known as fully programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs which experimenters can reconfigure in orbit to perform complex tasks.
More than 130 teams have already expressed interest in making use of OPS-SAT. In another first for ESA, successful applicants will be given direct access to the CubeSat via the internet.
Space is changing rapidly, and the way mission control works is changing too. Companies are planning hundreds or even thousands of satellites to accomplish a given mission, in the shape of new mega-constellations planned for low orbits. Individual satellites are going to have to get smarter and more autonomous.
Accordingly, OPS-SAT experiments cover topics like AI and autonomous planning, fault detection, and recognition, allowing satellites to recognize and self-correct errors, as well as new data compression and signal encryption techniques.
OPS-SAT will also try out optical communications for cryptography experiments and a ‘spectrum analyzer in the sky’ experiment for radio signal monitoring.
Experimental software will first be run on OPS-SAT’s ‘flatsat’- a functional replica of the CubeSat, before being uploaded to orbit.
OPS-SAT was built for ESA by a consortium composed of partners from Austria, Poland, Germany, and Demark led by TU Graz and Unitel IT Innovationen in Austria, supported through the FLY element of ESA’s General Support Technology Programme (GSTP), readying promising technologies for space.
