Academic cubesat development methodologies. : The cases of CREME and APTAS

Abstract: Since 2003, when the first batch of academic Cubesats was launched, 463 of these satellites havereached orbit. The issues faced in the early years were documented and since then the marketof Commercial off-the-shelf components, launch brokers and other auxiliary companies hassky-rocketed. Despite of the popularization of this educational satellites, or perhaps becauseof it, the rate of failures in this type of Cubesats kept constant over the years.The first part of this thesis explores the issues associated with development of academiccubesats found in literature, as well as the good practices and recommendations given by theteams. The studied works are divided in periods in order to examine possible trends in thetypes of issues and good practices reported.The document continues with an introduction to new paradigms and methodologies for ProjectManagement and Systems Engineering, paying special attention to Agile methodologies andMBSE and how they are, or could be applied, to academic Cubesat projects to mitigate thecommon issues and implement good practices.The use case of Cubesat for Radiation Environment Monitoring Experiment, the project wherethe author did his Master’s internship, is used to introduce the Time and Space Partitioningarchitecture in embedded systems, a very interesting approach that provides more reliabilitythan usual approaches and some project management benefits.Finally the use case of APTAS, another academic Cubesat project where the author wasinvolved, is used to illustrate how the issues and good practices mentioned in the first sectionaffect projects. This is achieved by extracting metrics about student engagement, turnoverratios and a thorough examination of the internal resources of the project.