Monday, April 20, 2015
During the first day of conference, I did the registration. The conference location was in Berlin-Bradenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. It was surrounded by beautiful and old buildings. The conference hall was set beautifully. There was only one session at the same time, so we could listen to all the presentations. Below are the picture of the conference hall.
There were 3 sessions on Monday including Programmatics, Missions I, and Instruments.
One paper presentation that attracted me most was from the Programmatics session: “Small Satellite Mission Program of the Technical University of Berlin”. They demonstrated the developments of the satellite program in TU Berlin, and the general embedding of the small satellite development in the space technology research and education activities of TU Berlin.
This was interesting, because in NCKU, we are also still developing our small satellite technologies.
The first day of the conference was closed by a panel discussion: Entrepreneurship in Space led by 5 professional panelists. This panel discussion was also very interesting and a lot of symposium participants joined the panel by giving their opinion. The most attractive topic that they discussed was about the risk of more space debris that caused by the increasing number of small satellites. I personally agree that small satellites will not cause space debris as long as it can be functioning in space, and it can also easily deorbit to the earth comparing to big satellites.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
This second day of the symposium was the most important day in the symposium according to us. This day was my poster presentation and student paper competition including an oral
presentation by one of our lab member.
There were 4 sessions and 1 poster session. The 4 sessions are: Missions II, Special Aspects, Student Conference (special), and Education. Missions II session was pretty interesting, but did not have any relation with our current satellite project in NCKU. One paper from Special Aspects session which discussed about “Achieving Successful End-Of-Life Disposal in LEO”, was very significant, remembering the space debris issue that are popular recently.
It was presented by ESA (European Space Agency) and DLR (German Space Agency). At the end, it was awarded as one of the best paper in the symposium. In the Student Conference session, our lab member presented his paper about “Implementation of the Fault Tolerance Module in PHOENIX CubeSat”. PHOENIX CubeSat is currently developed in NCKU and participate in European QB50 project. It will be launched in February 2016 using French Arianespace rocket. Below is the picture of him during his presentation.
Some other universities students were also competing in this Student Conference session.
They were from University of Pisa (Italy), Würzburg University (Germany), University of Surrey (UK), University of Stuttgart (Germany), and TU-Delft (Netherlands).
Education session was also more related to university projects. Their presentation was pretty useful for us to gain more knowledge which we can implement in our own satellite project.
The second day of the symposium was ended by poster session I, which is my session. Below are the pictures when I presented my poster.
The title of my paper which was presented in my poster was “A Small Satellite Mission for ISS Debris Collision Avoidance”. During my poster presentation, I got some recommendations and advices from some experts. More calculations and analysis were suggested in order to make the mission feasible and better. They were useful for the improvement of our current papers and for our future work.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
The same as the second day, this symposium day consisted of 4 sessions and 1 poster session.
Those 4 sessions were: Lesson Learned, Software, New Platforms, and Propulsion. One paper from the Software session was pretty related with my current research, which is about the Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem (ADCS) for CubeSat. The title of the paper was “Increasing computing performance of ADCS subsystems in small satellites for
earth observation”. They presented some new methods of ADCS software design by taking the advantages of continuous integration tools for embedded software development, in order to reduce the productivity gap, code fragmentation, and version control issues for small satellite ADCS subsystem development. The method was well presented, but more method for verification of the ADCS software was needed.
This conference day was ended by Poster Session II. Two of our lab members presented their poster. I also took a look at other posters during the poster session II. One CubeSat mission:
ESEO from Italy, discussed their ADCS design in their satellite. For their papers, they also took papers from our NCKU’s previous satellite mission “PACE” for their reference. I discussed with them about their ADCS design, including their sensors, actuators, algorithms, and requirements. I also got their contact number for further discussion. One more poster presentation related to ADCS, that I personally think that was good, was from IBST (Berlin Space Technologies) and Hyperion Technologies. They presented their method to test and verify the ADCS key performance parameters including sensors performance tests, actuator tests, thermal and vacuum test, vibration test, magnetic field test, and air bearing test. These information were helpful for the tests of our own satellites.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
For more sessions left and were presented during this day. They were Subsystems, Communication and Ground Segment, AOCS, and Missions III.
I had to listen carefully to the AOCS session because it was related to my current research.
One excellent presentation about AOCS was from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan:
“Pointing Accuracy and Stability Analysis of CMG Control for Nanosatellite TSUBAME”. CMG is very popular actuators under research, and our lab has not had any
missions utilizing CMG. It can be useful for our future projects which will need CMG as actuator.
This day was the last day of the lectures and symposium summary was presented at the end of the symposium:
Below are the symposium summary:
Statistics of the 10th IAA Symposium on Small Satellites for Earth Observation:
- Number of participants: 241 - Number of Nations: 32 - Number of Students: 48 - Number of Sessions: 15 - Number of Lectures: 60 - Number of Posters: 43 - Number of Panels: 1
Our lab member which presented in Student Conference session got an Honorable Mention.
Some best papers and posters were also awarded, but our posters were not in. Symposium summary presented by R. Sandau as IAA Symposium Co-Chair, and E.Gill as IAA Symposium Chief Rapporteur ended the overall symposium program.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Visit to: Historical Site of Peenemünde. We did not join this visit.