Log of the CuPID Blog
The CuPID team posted many updates during development of the satellite. This page captures the history of those blog posts. The original author and posting date are shared in the title by (Name, Date).
CuPID at the GEM Conference! (E. Atz, Jul. 11, 2019)
Recently, at the end of June, the CuPID team from BU presented at the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) conference in Santa Fe, NM. Our Principal Investigator Brian Walsh presented the mission to a conference session focusing on magnetic reconnection. PhD student Emil Atz presented the CuPID instruments during an evening... More
It is a Flight-Unit CubeSat! (E. Atz, Feb. 2, 2019)
This week, the CuPID team finalized the chassis structure, and began to test how components would integrate onto and into the chassis. At Boston University, we tested the solar panels on the chassis, both in fitment and performance. Below, Thompson Cragwell, an engineer in our research group proudly holds our... More
More Power! (E. Atz, Dec. 11, 2018)
In the last two months, we have built and began testing the flight model solar panels for CuPID. If you remember, we posted about building the small, -X face solar panel in May, yet this panel was only able to fit 7 solar cells. Using the lessons learned from manufacturing... More
Ready for First Contact! (T. Cragwell, Oct 22, 2018)
September 27th and 28th: Kevin Jackson and Steven Erickson of Flexitech Aerospace came to Boston to perform the installation of a custom ground station. The ground station will communicate with CuPID once in orbit. The ground station consists of two major components, the main computer terminal and the radio antenna. More
Successful Vibe Test (B. Walsh, May 26, 2018)
CuPID goes through a successful vibe test! The violent shaking of a rocket during launch can cause a number of issues with a spacecraft including parts rattling loose, electronics being damaged, and optics being offset in an imaging system. To test the spacecraft and instruments prior to full integration, CuPID went... More
Power Up! Solar Panel Build (E. Atz, May 15, 2018)
A few weeks ago, Aleks Zosuls and I populated cells on a printed circuit board (PCB) for one of CuPID’s solar panels. It was decided to affix the solar cells to CuPID’s solar panel PCBs using double sided Kapton tape. Kapton is a thermal and electrical insulator, and with adhesive on... More
Why Space Parts are Different than Earth Parts (E. Atz, Jan 15, 2018)
It is pretty common in the satellite field to hear, “that costs how much!?” Generally speaking, space grade parts cost more because of the effort required to minimize the risk of failure. On Earth, an inexpensive part could fail, but could be replaced (with some frustration of course). On orbit, More
First Things First: A Design Review Meeting (E. Atz, Sep 8, 2017)
What is a CDR? In many areas of work, before a large project progresses far from concept into design, fabrication, and testing, an important meeting must be scheduled. In this meeting, team members present progress and future work to colleagues as well as a set of second party reviewers. This type... More
CubeSats (B. Walsh, Jul 16, 2017)
As the very first post, we’ll look at cube-satellites or cubesats before getting into specifics about the Cupid mission. Very simply, a cubesat is a small spacecraft that fits into several standard sizes. Below shows several different options and a loaf of bread for scale of size. Each “U” in the... More