Orbital analysis and hardware configuration for Inter-Satellite Link in STUDSAT-2

STUDSAT - 2 is a Student Satellite Program carried out by the undergraduate students from seven engineering colleges from the state of Karnataka, India. STUDSAT-2 is India´s First Twin Satellite Mission which aims to demonstrate Inter-Satellite Communication and improving temporal resolution by taking images of the same part of the earth by the Twin Satellites. STUDSAT-2 consists of two Nano Satellites each having the dimension of 30 × 30 × 20 cm cube and weighing less than 10 kg. Each satellite has two payloads, one is the CMOS Camera with a resolution of 80 m per pixel and other is the Inter Satellite Link(ISL) facility. The satellites are in along-the-track constellation architecture with the Master Satellite sending GPS parameters to the Slave satellite via Inter Satellite Link for repeated imaging. This paper presents estimation of relative velocity to be induced by the Inter-Satellite separation system between the twin satellites based on mission requirements, separation system specification and orbital analysis for the two satellites after separation in space. It also presents the Inter-Satellite Link Analysis, the hardware specification for Inter-Satellite Communication and the experimental results.