Space Missions Engineering Laboratory

• Palamede Microsatellite
• ESA - ESEO
• ESA - ESMO
• Parabolic Flights
• Student Mission Design Projects
• Prizes and Awards

Palamede Microsatellite

The project Palamede, born in 1997, gives the opportunity to the students to participate in the design, the development and the realization of a Micro satellite. Besides this purely didactic goal, the satellite is also aimed at the use of not space-qualified components and technologies.

Palamede is a three-axis stabilized satellite with a cube shape with side of 400 millimeters. The low side (base plate) is made of alluminum alloy and it allows to interface with the launcher during the launch phase. On the base plate all the electronic components will be mounted around a central hole which allows to take pictures with the CCD.

 

CAD model of the internal view of the satellite. The most important structural and electronic components are shown

 

The payload of Palamede are the Earth Surface Imagining System (ESIS) and the Top Solar Array. ESIS is composed by a CCD camera and a GPS receiver. The Top Panel is made of ESA triple junction solar cells which will fly for the first time; the task of Palamede is to collect telemetry data about the behavior of this solar panel. Palamede is also a demonstrator of the capability of engineering students of Politecnico di Milano to design and produce a multipurpose bus to send different kind of payloads (scientific and commercial) on orbit with small changes.

 

CCD camera part of Earth Surface Imagining System

 

 

The telecommunication subsystem is constituted by a radio modem, linked with ORBCOMM constellation; this kind of solution allows using a common computer with a web link instead of a standard ground station, because all communication will be performed by e-mail.

 

 

800 km sun-synchronous Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Palamede microsatellite shall be launched into.

 

The ADCS subsystem provides the determination of the satellite orientation by one coarse sun sensor and a magnetometer, and it will provide the control of the satellite by using three magnetic torquers. The on-board computer is based on a PC-104 architecture, running a real-time Linux operating system

Palamede EGSE

Laboratory view of the triple junction solar cells to be mounted on the top panel of Palamede.

For further details, please visit the dedicated website.