Orbit space satelite - two projects

Software Architecture Design for Ground Station and OBC

Orbit NTNU is building a small satellite that will be launched into low earth orbit. The satellite contains a flight computer with an OS developed at NTNU. Orbit also operates a ground station used to communicate with satellites.

Both of these systems need a software architecture which is suited for the given usecase. This involves researching existing solutions and choosing one which can be adapted to our satellite mission.

This is an assignment which provides a large degree of freedom. Both the flight computer and ground station contains numerous systems that can be focused on in addition to more overarching software architecture.

Memory Protection on Flash and SD Card / ECC Implementation

Orbit NTNU is building a small satellite that will be launched into low earth orbit. The satellite contains 3 microcontrollers that are developed at NTNU.

The space environment has increased amounts of radiation that will damage components and cause temporary bit flips which eventually will corrupt stored data. Therefore the microcontrollers on a satellite must have fault tolerant memory which is able to detect and mitigate memory failures. This can be achieved by ECC methods such as redundant memory, data comparison and checksums.

The assignment involves researching possible solutions for fault tolerant data storage, and implementation and testing of the chosen solution.

It is suggested that possible solutions are researched during the fall project, while implementation and testing are done as a master thesis.