Nanosatellites

10 I-2iSystems Engineering and Quality Assessment

Lucas Lopes Costa¹, Geilson Loureiro¹, Eduardo Escobar Bürger², and Franciele Carlesso¹

¹National Institute for Space Research, São José dos Campos, Brazil

²Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil

10.1 Introduction

The number of nanosatellite space missions has sharply increased since the standardization of platforms and growth of launch opportunities. Nanosatellite projects arise as a new branch in the domain of spacecraft programs. The traditional engineering processes and practices may not be fully appropriate for smaller spacecraft development mainly due to large differences regarding schedule and cost limitations. The traditional systems engineering (SE) process has been successfully applied on larger satellites, however, it does not mean that implementing it on nanosatellite development is effective. The remarkable complexity difference between the concepts of large and small satellites identified since 2000s is becoming unclear. Recent nanosatellite developments are complex with the use of new technology and have the same engineering problems related to project development, space environment, and operations in a smaller scale.

The complexity and size attributes suggest that applying a traditional engineering approach to nanosatellite development may overwhelm project developers, and negatively affect two important features of small satellites: low cost and fast delivery.

The first ...