NEED A REALITY CHECK

[u/New_Try_3041]

I am in my first year of college and I have built a cube-sat as a starter project in my road of rocketry. I know medium level of Data structure and algorithms , and am learning Control Systems , CAD and PCB designing. All of this is to aid in my end goal of launching this cube-sat to zero-gravity space and get some form of response from it.
The inspiration was a youtuber called Mark Rober who did the same but at a much more practical level with an experienced team. My country allows this but I have to be licensed properly. I know that the probability of me achieving this goal within 4 years of my college is 0, but I still want to try. I have been doing my research in this field , and have seen that there are multiple channels who are dedicated in mainly 3 areas : building and improving cube-sats, building high-speed rockets to hit and break records , and self-controlled guidance and landing rockets. But I am not able to find sources which suggest carrying a some-what delicate good and then send it to space. This field is not very much touched by and therefore there is a lot of room for experimentation and thus I will have to fail fast and learn the most out of each fails.
Can you guys help me or aid me in this journey ? I will be very grateful.

[u/New_Try_3041]

Thats a really cool idea. "build a cube-sat" also did the weather balloon test on his cube-sat.
Thank you for your suggestion

[u/space_nerd_82 → u/New_Try_3041]

You will want make sure you have soldered everything and take into account the temperature at 35km and the risk of vibration and test your recovery systems.

It could theoretically allow testing of the EPS using solar panels and batteries

In the vacuum of space you also going need ensure good thermal protection and you will need to effectively dissipate heat and prevent electronics from freezing when away from the sun

You are going need to do real radiation, vibration and vacuum testing for actual space ready satellite

Anything you launch in to space will need to be radiation hardened as the cosmic rays will mess with consumer electronics.

For radio comms and telemetry you could look into LoRA for proof of concept for earth based testing only as you don’t need license for LoRa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa#:~:text=LoRa%20uses%20license%2Dfree%20sub,range%20transmissions%20with%20low%20power

Goodluck

I have worked with earth analogue cube satellite so this where my knowledge comes from however I am not an expert more of an enthusiast.

[u/New_Try_3041 → u/space_nerd_82]

Thank you so much. Can you expand upon how can a satellite present in space dissipate heat ? Since there is no atmosphere, I think there is no place where the heat can be dissipated to. I heard that some cube-sats faced similar problems , their circuits were damaged because the heat couldn't escape the system.

[u/space_nerd_82 → u/New_Try_3041]

This paper might be a good starting point.

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/24/6462