Imaging Payload System Design for Nano-Satellite Applications in Low-Earth Orbit

Abstract

This study presents a complete hardware and software design of an imaging payload, InterFace Camera (IFCAM), for the CubeSat standard. The payload is intended to take earth images from 350km Low Earth Orbit and is a non-critical mission payload for Seoul National Universitys first CubeSat, SNUSAT-1. The camera has a MT9D111 2M pixel image sensor with a STM32F429ZI processor running at 180MHz, 4GB SD card for data storage, 8MB flash memory and 8MB expandable SDRAM. The camera is configured to take images in 160x120 pixels because of the limited downlink budget given to the imaging payload. Edmund Optics fixed focus M12x0.5 lens with 650mm IR-Cut off filter and the Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) is calculated to about 650km. The Ground Swath, with the optics, is 570x400km which cover South Korea. The payload underwent Random Vibration and Vacuum Testing and showed no issues in the design. Furthermore, the design proposed is modular and has been used for designing the On-Board Computer for SNUSAT-1.