Fast development and validation of a Sensing Suite system for CubeSats

Educational CubeSats still remain valuable hands-on practice activity in an academic environment and provide effective and innovative solutions from technical and management points of view. Fast delivery and low cost is the paradigm driving such projects. Contemporary, the simplicity of the solutions has to match with reliability to guarantee the success of the on orbit operations. The present paper shows the entire life cycle of a Sensing Suite System suitable as scientific data collector within a CubeSat, developed in less than four months from the conceptual design to the delivery and reaching the orbit in less than six months. Technical solutions for hardware and software development and test and management good practices are provided. Circuits details to withstand and/or tolerate the space environment and data handling to maximize the number of data and measurements gathered onboard are explained. The use of breadboards and flat-sat arrangements support both the design and verification of the protoflight comprising the schedule and increasing the confidence level on the goodness of the entire solution. The reliability of the design is proven through the entire assembly, integration and verification campaign and validated by the data sent by the satellite during the operative mission.