Week 9: Finishing line!!!

My time here at lab is almost finished... So much work, so little time. I haven't really been able to meet my technical lead at the lab very much recently, but now he has resigned from his job to pursue a Ph.D. Soon, I'll have to call him doctor. I am sort of close to being finished, but that is if I power through this last week. The components for a testing apparatus we need to build have finally arrived, so we will commence building on Monday.

The schedule I set with my technical lead had 5 milestones:

1. Trade studies
1. Trade studies compares the pros and cons of a particular component in a tabular form. By looking at the table, I can then discover which is the best or most suitable components. In my case, we did some trade studies. However, they couldn't be done very completely because supposedly Commercially Off The Shelf items do not have detailed data-sheets. This fact is one interesting issue that could be examined. After all, the point of the CubeSat Initiative is to make creating small satellites an easy task. However, with the secrecy of the COTS  suppliers, this has created a small oligopoly of specialized component manufacturers. However, I am not completely sure whether my last statement is accurate, but that is the feeling I get.
2. I have not yet finished this. I am currently backfilling stuff, but like I said, it is hard to compare things that have their data sheets hidden... And the suppliers make you sign an NDA so that you don't leak the details of their products...
2. Budgeting
1. I have just finished a mass budget and a volume budget.  However, I am still missing a couple of components like a temperature sensor and electronic valves.
3. ConOps
1. I have finished the ConOps graphic for the most part. Currently, I am just awaiting CAD models that accurately depict the CubeSat's state while in space. My mentor has the CADs finished, but unfortunately, he doesn't have a lightning-fast renderer/graphics card that can render the CAD models.
4. Preliminary Orbit Design/Analysis
1. I have read and mostly understood the orbital mechanics pdf that I attached a while ago. Unfortunately, orbit design is sort of arbitrary. There are a countless number of possible orbits around earth. By infinite, I actually mean infinite. However, we are going to just find orbits that other people have used, and use those. To generate good orbits, one needs parameters and software. Unfortunately, I don't have the software... There are indeed equations that govern orbital mechanics, but there are many equations and quite a few proprietary software that do orbit design. Thus, we'll just copy orbits which have been used by others. The only two constraints is that the orbit should be an ISS orbit (the orbit must be between 330 and 435 km away from Earth) and should be sun-synchronous (The orbit is always exposed to the sun). A sun-synchronous orbit makes it much easier on the batteries. That way, the solar panels will always be close to full output.
5. Preliminary Thermal Design/Analysis
6. Preliminary Thermal Design/Analysis
1. I don't really have the necessary skills to do the last few milestones, so my technical lead will do this for me, and have me write about the results.

Additionally, we will create an apparatus and test the inflatable in order to have nice scientific results to write about and present.

It's almost finished, but it feels like we're just starting...