Scope

Foreword

Faced with the difficulties encountered in the development of nanosatellites by project managers in France, the first reasonable observation is to try to pool as much as possible all the technical, human and financial resources within the community. To this end, the Fédération Nanosats has undertaken to :

Taking stock, pooling resources, identifying

The Federation’s members include laboratories with long-standing expertise in the space sector and already well-equipped in terms of testing facilities and infrastructure. Through its community, it has access to several clean rooms (ISO-5, -7, -8) as well as a vast list of thermal, mechanical, optical, electromagnetic and specific test facilities. A survey, undertaken by Jérôme Parisot, has made it possible to assess the existing facilities that could potentially be shared by the members of the Nanosats Federation and to identify the gaps with a view to targeting future investments.

In addition, the nanosatellite environment is such that there are elements and processes that can be reused or shared. This is the case for technology bricks, which are elements or processes fulfilling a specific function that can be adapted to other projects, and for a set of standard components, known as COTS (component off-the-shelf). Thanks to the work carried out by Boris Segret, Sébastien Payan, Nicolas Rividi and Nöel Grand, the Federation will soon be able to offer its members a documented database of user guides and feedback listing all the technological bricks and COTS that can be shared within the community.

Developing the Nanosatgrid project

The scientific objectives of nanosatellite projects are such that there is a great need to provide extensive telemetry (24/7) with ground antennas. Until now, most of these ground antennas have operated in isolation, restricting communication with the satellite to a limited geographical and temporal area, and are subject to interruptions due to maintenance periods, for example. That is why, in order to make full use of the large number of ground stations already existing, the Federation and its partners are proposing to adopt common interfaces for all the stations and to develop a system for reserving antennas and direct, possibly encrypted, links between an operator and its satellite via a third-party station. This is at the heart of the Nanosatgrid project led by CENSUS and Eutelsat with a consortium including several other partners. With the interconnectivity of ground stations, not only would all the partners benefit from better national or even international geographical coverage, especially if compatibility with SatNOGs is ensured, but it would also be possible to offer a commercial service.

List of UHF/VHF ground stations involved in the Nanosatgrid project, belonging to the various partners. This diagram does not include the SATNogs network.

Sharing financial resources

With an annual budget provided by its supervisory bodies, the Nanosats Federation is able to finance pooling projects proposed by its members for its members. These may involve, for example, the purchase of new equipment or the development of software, the modification of existing equipment or software in order to share it, the implementation of an access procedure in order to share equipment, or the creation of documentation in order to share equipment or software.

In response to calls for projects from external funders, the Federation can also coordinate joint responses from all or several of its partners.

Communicating

Counter-intuitively to the more agile and faster nanosatellite environment, the lack of organisation and stable funding on a national scale raises crucial issues for the survival of projects. Faced with this situation, the Nanosats Federation has set itself the task of raising awareness of these issues among institutions and funders, and outlining some possible solutions.

At the same time, Fédération Nanosats is developing internal communications within its community to pool resources, facilitate the sharing of experience and provide support at all stages of projects.

Support Ile-de-France space academy

The Space Academy is a winning project under the France 2030 plan, which aims to bring together and coordinate training activities in space-related professions in the Paris Region, as well as creating a community of trainers and employers around themes of major strategic and economic interest. With the space industry undergoing such rapid change, particularly with the advent of NewSpace, training future generations in this field is a fundamental challenge.

Although the Nanosats Federation is dedicated to scientific research, its members have NewSpace expertise on which the Space Academy can draw on.