I designed an On Board Computer for a Cube Satellite with Altium Designer.
The 6 Layer PCB has:
* 1 x Dual Lockstep MCU TMS570
* 1 x DSP TMS320 for RF
* 2 x Hardware Watchdog Timers
* 1 x Differential ADC
* 1 x Differential DAC
* 2 x Radiation hardened magnetoresistive RAM
* 1 x Temperature sensor
* 2 x Gyroscope Accelerometer
* 2 x Magnetometer
* 1 x GPS
* 1 x Temperature Compensated Voltage Controlled Oscillator
Files
Schematics.pdf
Schematics for PCB
Adobe Portable Document Format -
4.80 MB -
02/09/2024 at 21:11
GPS can be used in orbit. Not just any old GPS will work though. ITAR for example is a regulation of GPS use in these scenario's that comes into play as well.
If your satellite is below the GPS satellites, then it will work without any problems.
Consumer grade GPS will not work because there are speed regulations set by ITAR.
You need to have a special GPS that has the speed regulations disabled
Alternatively, you can use magnetometers and star trackers to get your absolute position. Every location on Earth has a unique magnetic field strength and you can use it to determine absolute position. Also, star trackers are good because you can just track which stars you can see and compare it to a star map to get the absolute position.
Very impressive. Are you also doing the software for this?