HAVELSAT: A software defined radio experimentation CubeSat

Abstract

Despite the small amount of available volume, CubeSat missions have proven to be quite useful, especially for scientific data gathering, educational purposes and small scale industrial equipment testing. The aim of this article is to discuss the design principles and project goals of a CubeSat that is part of the QB50 project. HAVELSAT is a double-unit CubeSat with one functional and one scientific unit. The scientific payload of HAVELSAT is a Software Defined Radio for communication. The satellite also performs a small scale onboard image processing.