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XATCOBEO

Space Engineering

Within the XaTcobeo project the joint venture of several research groups  has built a pico-satellite according to the cubesat standard within an educational environment following the ECSS (European Cooperation for Space Standardization) recommendations. The proposal of the University of Vigo has been granted a slot in the Vega maiden flight launched February 14th, 2012 (ESA eoPortal) as one (of seven) of the initially 9 participating universities among the 21 candidate projects.

Several research groups from different departments of the University of Vigo in joint work with the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) designed and built the pico-satellite XaTcobeo with two payloads and two experimental mechanism. The two payloads are a programmable software radio (UVigo design) and a radiation measuring device (INTA design). The two mechanisms include a solar panel deployment system (INTA design) and an antenna deployment unit (UVigo design).

In LIA, we coorporated in the design and implementation of the XaTcobeo on-board software written in C:

  • XaTcobeo Mission Software (xms): the fully functional upper layers of the real-time on-board software following the system design specifications which uses the low-level drivers provided by INTA and the space link functionality including the communications modes developed by the telecommunications group.

  • XaTcobeo Mimicry Software: basic mimicry of the low-level drivers on API level for debugging purposes of xms on a Linux platform.

  • XaTcobeo Groundstation Software (xgs): a simple simulator on packet exchange level over UDP for debugging purposes of xms on the simulation platform.

  • XaTcobeo Debug Software (xds): a simulator of the serial interface to the XaTcobeo hardware for debugging purposes of xms on the simulation platform.

Previously, students within LIA realized the following software development whose components run on the early testing hardware:

  • First on-board software running on prototype hardware for testing purposes.

  • Simulator of external devices via serial port in Java.

  • Analysis and design of a ground station data processing software.

xatcobeo1 xatcobeo02 xatcobeo03 xatcobeo04 xatcobeo05 carrabouxo
antenna front from above "é galego" under test hosted in P-pod Carrabouxo

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