Development of Vision Payload for the Nanosatellite VELOX-I

Abstract: In the recent years, CubeSat’s are evolving from purely educational tools to a standard platform for technology demonstration and miniaturized scientific instrumentation. The use of COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) components aided the ongoing miniaturiza- tion of several technologies and demonstrated successfully. Furthermore advantages in this small satellite approach are due to their lesser development times and smaller sizes suitable for multiple CubeSat launches on a single launcher into their respective desig- nated orbits which is cost effective for Universities. These architectures not only promise the combination of both temporal resolution of GEO missions with spatial resolution of LEO missions, but also breaks the trade off in conventional Earth observation satel- lite designs. A thorough implementation of the firmware of vision payload of the Nano Satellite VELOX-I for the Earth observation and remote sensing purposes, in the near future with high scientific payoff is presented here. In course of implementation various case studies have been learned, current date CCSDS recommendations for image com- pression have been considered. Effect of key components such as power, memory and data transmission capability for small satellite remote sensing applications are discussed. Implementation of the core firmware of the payload and serial interface development in Java on Linux platform of Payload Processing Unit shall be able to inherit into the future VELOX missions.