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Cube Satellite Flight Computer

Project Description:

Flight computer for NASA's IMPRESS CubeSat mission and the Air Force Research Laboratory's 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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