Evaluating the In-Orbit Performance of Power Management System for the VELOX-PII Satellite

Abstract

VELOX-PII is the first Singapore pico-satellite that has been developed in the Satellite Research Centre (SaRC) of Nanyang Technological University. The satellite was launched on 21 Nov 2013. It became the second successful satellite mission in SaRC in addition to an environmental monitoring micro-satellite named X-SAT that has been operating in space since 20 April 2011. The power supply system (PSS) was developed in-house and a virtual-instrument-based prelaunch orbital test system has been developed to measure its performance. The system consists of solar array simulators, electronic loads and a data acquisition system controlled by an in-house developed LabVIEW-based graphical user interface. The prelaunch results show that the PSS hardware design has met the system requirements. Based on the in-orbit data collected, the PSS shows similar performance as the prelaunch test.