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Cube Satellite Flight Computer

Project Description:

Flight computer for the NASA funded IMPRESS CubeSat mission and the AFRL/USSF funded EXACT CubeSat, designed as part of the University of Minnesota's Small Satellite Research Lab using Altium PCB Designer. It features a Raspberry Pi running a Linux kernel, with hardware to interface with the rest of the electrical power systems, five onboard X-ray detectors via CAN, GPIO pins, I2C, UART and USB. The biggest challenge of this project was getting it to fit inside the space allocated. Space is at a premium inside a CubeSat!

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Pictured: Flight Computer PCB Layout

4-layer FR-4 PCB with a 7-port USB hub, CAN transceiver, 5V to 1.8V + 3.3V buck converter, SLC flash memory, and Raspberry Pi Compute Module.

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Pictured: Impedance Controlled Layer Stack up

Top and bottom layers are both used as signal layers, while USB is routed only on the bottom layer. This ensures a differential impedance of 90 ohms, as required by USB specifications.

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Pictured: Visually Inspecting SMD Components

Visual inspection with a high-magnification USB microscope to ensure all components are correctly placed, including those with challenging 0.5mm pitch, and that every pad is perfectly flowed out

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Pictured: IMPRESS CubeSat

Space inside a CubeSat is at a premium. Making PCB's fit in their allotted space can be quite the challenge while maintaining signal and power integrity. 

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Credit Kelly Behlen

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