ONE SATELLITE PER COUNTRY - HOW EMERGING SPACE-FARING NATIONS CAN BENEFIT FROM TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER THROUGH FREE OPEN-SOURCE PROJECTS

摘要

Today many developing countries are implementing or planning to implement a national space program. One ofthe main goals of these emerging space-faring nations often is the establishment of an own national space industry inorder to avoid brain-drain and to foster the national economy A problem faced by many of these nations is theinherent lack of heritage in the field of space technology. Because of this lack, these nations are dependent oftechnology transfer from other space-faring nations. A multitude of different mechanisms for technology transferexist. Free open-source technology is one of the cheapest, yet most effective solution for technology transfer. This isbecause the source-codes and designs are free of charge and the underlying technology is open for inspection. Thisfact also minimizes transaction costs of communication, licensing and negotiations. Thus the available funds can bespent effectively for technology advance. In this paper the mechanism of technology transfer through free opensourceprojects is described and the mechanism is applied to space projects. Many universities and amateur groups indeveloped as well as developing countries maintain small-satellite projects. The vast majority of these projects areclosed-source and thus are inherently redundant in technology aspects. If only a small percentage of these projectsdecide to open their sources and designs it seems to be possible to develop a catalogue of free open-source satellitehardware components and interfaces. The establishment of free interface definitions and communication protocols isespecially important to foster interoperability and interchangeability. Also many small-satellites have very similarmission designs, leading to the belief that it is possible to define a set of baseline designs for free and open smallsatelliteplatforms. The design principles for such a open small-satellite platform are established and described in thispaper. The main design principles are the usage of commercial of the shelf parts and the focus on the "keep it simple,stupid!" principle. The conclusion is, that a "One Satellite per Country" project similar to the "One Laptop perChild" project is feasible and may lead to a huge increase in the speed of technology transfer not only in the area ofspace technology. The core of this project is formed by a set of existing open-source software projects which will beintegrated to the OpenSatDK. The aim of this is to provide the possibility to do system engineering with dedicatedopen-source tools.