Space Probes

The mission control GUI for our satellite WREN has been created by Dipl. Ing. Sacha Tholl

It will make the control of the satellite in orbit intuitive and easy.

Milling the Shakerbox. Thanx to Jacek Wisniowski for technical support.

A development model of WREN in the shakerbox frame

Paul Kocyla and Sacha Tholl at the Space Horizons Workshop 2013 in Providence (RI)

More about the Space Horizons Workshop

This is the first picture transmitted from the satellite in Martin-1 SSTV format. Thanx for this lovely support to my sweetheart Rong

Find out more about SSTV

Succesful test of my 8-Channel pulsed plasma thruster. Let´s see how it performs in orbit.

Paul Kocyla at the vacuum test chamber of the FH-Aachen University

New evaluation boards of various subsystems are ready. From left to right:
Solar charge controller, 12V-Boost-Converter for radio power stage and valves, source drivers, motor controller for reaction wheels, radio transceiver

Rotation rate estimation for our RCS+IMU (reaction control system/inertial measuring unit)
The module includes a 3-axes rate gyro, 3-axes accelerometer and control hardware for microthrusters.
It will work together with the optical navigation module, reaction wheels and thrusters beeing able to determine its attitude and position in space, tracing its flight path and perform desaturation and midcourse corrections.
Fixed point arithmetic on quaternions and kalman filters will be used for fast and accurate calculations. (Paul Kocyla Sep2011)

Desktop Delta-V workshop in Providence, RI

Paul Kocyla joined the Desktop Delta-V workshop this year. The topic was safe propulsion for small spacecrafts.
He gave a lecture on plasma electrolysis propulsion for cubesats.