Hands-on Practices for Space Systems Engineering Education Using Pico-Satellite Training Kit HEPTA-Sat

摘要

We developed new hands-on type course and tool for space systems engineering. This is one of the courses at Aerospace Engineering, College of Science Technology, Nihon University. The goal of the course is to provide the students with space systems engineering experience by assembly, integration & test (AI & T) of "classroom pico-satellite kit HEPTA-Sat". We report the details of pico-satellite kit and course of HEPTA-Sat in this paper. There are two major contributions. The first is that we provide learning opportunity to students with varied background. The second is that the course focuses on verification and validation (V&V) through software and hardware AI & T of pico-satellite kit HEPTA-Sat. We found out that the course helped them understand space systems engineering in a short amount of time (ex. 1 day to 1 trimester) and very low-cost rather than conventional space engineering educational kit. These have not been realized in any of the previous engineering courses worldwide.