Nanosatellites

11 I-2jIntegration and Testing

Eduardo Escobar Bürger¹, Geilson Loureiro², and Lucas Lopes Costa²

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Santa Maria – UFSM, Brazil

²National Institute for Space Research – INPE, São José dos Campos, Brazil

11.1 Introduction

The term “integration and testing” (I&T) relates to the sequential process of joining parts, confirming that the parts of this assembly are working together and testing to verify fulfillment of requirements. Even though this process is recursively repeated from lower-level configuration items (right after manufacturing) up to the complete system of interest, the I&T acronym is widely (and herein) used referring to the last stage of satellite integration and testing, in which the subsystems are integrated and tested to form the space element.

Nanosatellites are products that have several parts, equipment, and subsystems, which interact among themselves to provide output to the system functions. These systems are designed to survive very harsh conditions imposed by launch and space environments in which they are exposed. Beyond that, nanosatellite developers generally make extensive use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, which have been investigated about their performance and survivability in such environments. Therefore, coupled with the impossibility of repairing a failure after launch (with few exceptions) and limited resources, rigorous satellite integration and testing campaign is mandatory ...