Recently, we received many printed circuit boards (PCBs) which are about to be soldered. In the picture below, you can see our smallest PCBs.
- Upper-left: a thermal sensor board which will be placed on four sides of the outer structure. It has an I2C interface.
- Upper-right: a thermal knife board and a deployment detection board, for the solar panel hold down and release system.
- Lower-left: a sun sensor board with the window structure on top. The board contains all read out electronics and a microcontroller. The header at the bottom is only for programming. The interface with the satellite is soldered wire for power and I2C to minimize the overall dimensions of this sun sensor. This sun sensor is probably the world's smallest integrated solution for space applications.
Today, 28 April 2012, Delfi-C3 is already four years in orbit. The satellite is still functioning well; telemetry is received daily. Although we never expected the satellite to last this long, it might be the case that there will be two operational satellites from TU Delft later this year.
Below a tweet from André Kuipers from the International Space Station.
The newest and final Deployment & Antenna Board (DAB) PCB has arrived. This board manages the deployment of the antennae and solar panels, but also contains the antenna boxes and contains a RF phasing and isolation network, The coming weeks, this board will be populated with all components and tested. If everything goes well, this will be flight hardware.
Many structural parts have been produced and are now being checked for integration by Johan. Once verified, they will be cleaned and obtain proto-flight status. On the picture you can see the top panel, bottom panel, side panels and the battery boxes.
