抄録
Many microsatellites developed and operated by university teams have been launched in recent years. However, some of the microsatellites faced fatal problems in operation and could not fully achieve their missions due to the teams’ lack of experience. Since it is difficult for teams to forecast and avoid fatal problems, they have not accomplished the real space missions yet. Although the accumulation of experiences is necessary to avoid fatal problems, a single team is not able to develop enough satellites to encounter each possible problem, and newcomers lack the experience to predict and prevent all problems. Experiences and knowledge gained by the experienced teams should be shared among all university teams, including newcomers. In this study, we analyzed the success and failure of CubeSats and university microsatellites statistically to understand the present situation and forecast the future of microsatellite development. In addition, to gather detailed data, we conducted a questionnaire investigation about the failures and the development environment at Japanese universities with teams that have developed microsatellites. We reveal their various trends and problems and predict the number of launched CubeSats and mission success probability. Additionally, we highlight the potential to predict half of the failures using tests.
