The OPS-SAT mission

The main goal of the ESA's OPS-SAT mission is to provide a "flying laboratory", to allow testing and validation of new techniqes in on-board systems and especially mission control. Live testing of mission control systems is critical, however testing of new techniques and procedures are often not feasible and too risky for major platforms. The main challenge of the project therefore was to design and develop a low-cost spacecraft which is safe and robust against any malfunctions during testing and operations. OPS-SAT acts as an in-orbit test bed for:

• On-board software applications
• Advanced communications protocols
• Compression techniques
• Demonstration of advanced software-defined radio (SDR) concepts
• Optical communication from ground to space
• Experiments using cameras, attitude control, scheduling and autonomy
• Experiments with ground-based applications