Aerospace Engineering Brown Bag Lecture Series, James Anderson and Emma Johnson

The Feburary 18th AE Brown Bag Presentation featured James Anderson and Emma Johnson
James Anderson presented "Telemetry Decryption and Visualization for GT Mission Operations Center for GT-1 CubeSat"
The GT-1 CubeSat is the first satellite supported by the GT Mission Operations Center (MOC). Recently deployed from the ISS, the CubeSat features a UHF radio antenna to broadcast beacon packets that feature satellite health and analytics. These beacons are sent as telemetry and received by the MOC to better understand the effects of battery life, atmospheric drag, and other characteristics of orbiting objects to aid in the design of future CubeSat missions. However, the beacon packets sent by GT-1 are encrypted and require the usage of a dictionary to reference the meanings behind certain bytes in certain positions. Additionally, the data must be visually presented in an intuitive manner such that future Georgia Tech satellite designers understand the conditions of Low Earth Orbit. For this reason, MatLab and Python scripts were developed to automatically facilitate the decoding of GT-1’s telemetry, which are then uploaded to an online database for archiving. By developing this framework, packets sent by GT-1 and other future satellites can be displayed and interpreted as easy-to-understand visuals to better in the development and operation of future CubeSat missions.
Emma Johnson presented "Data Packaging and Designing of the STRATOS Payload"
The STRATOS mission was an endeavor by local company Spaceworks to create a payload recovery vehicle to ensure safe and easier transport of payloads from the ISS to Earth. Spaceworks contracted Dr. Lightsey’s lab to create a payload to go inside of this vehicle to prove their concept. The STRATOS payload that was created focused on data storage and live communication between the payload and the ground station. This presentation will discuss the transmission of the full amount of data from the instrumentation via radio to the ground station using the Arduino teensy platform, packaging of data and sensor output format and how that effected mission functionality.