{"id":25423,"date":"2026-04-02T13:13:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T13:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/?p=25423"},"modified":"2026-04-02T13:13:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T13:13:54","slug":"four-months-to-orbit-fast-tracking-cubesat-development-for-reliability-through-in-orbit-demonstrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/four-months-to-orbit-fast-tracking-cubesat-development-for-reliability-through-in-orbit-demonstrations\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Months to Orbit: Fast-Tracking CubeSat Development for Reliability Through In-Orbit-Demonstrations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>MICHAEL LINDER; AZIZ BELKHIRIA; ROBIN BONNY; JOAQUIM SILVEIRA; SANTIAGO EVANGELISTA; NICOLAS BOURON; SAVERIO NASTURZIO; TARAS PAVLIV; RICO FAUSCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DOI Number: 10.13009\/EUCASS2023-019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A consortium led by the EPFL Spacecraft Team is developing the Constellation of High Energy Swiss Satellites (CHESS) mission, which will launch two 3U CubeSats to low Earth orbit in 2025 to analyze the absolute number density profiles of the chemical composition, their dynamics, and the total electron content in situ. To reduce subsystem risks and increase reliability, the team conducted an in-orbit demon\u00adstration referred to as the Bunny mission, launching an onboard computer demonstrator to low Earth orbit in January 2023. This study outlines the architecture of the payload, the technical challenges faced, and the systems engineering approach. In-orbit demonstrations are shown to be effective in mitigating risks for the mission whilst providing educational value. Agile methods, including in-orbit software updates, are shown to be compatible with such missions, and test results show the hardware&#8217;s functionality after five months in orbit. The project&#8217;s success highlights students&#8217; ability to contribute to space technology and encourages others to do the same. This de-risking paves the way for the follow-up satellites of CHESS to provide long-awaited data to study the status, origin, and evolution of a habitable atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eucass.eu\/doi\/EUCASS2023-019.pdf\">Read the full paper here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>MICHAEL LINDER; AZIZ BELKHIRIA; ROBIN BONNY; JOAQUIM SILVEIRA; SANTIAGO EVANGELISTA; NICOLAS BOURON; SAVERIO NASTURZIO; TARAS PAVLIV; RICO FAUSCH<\/b><\/p>\n<p>DOI Number: 10.13009\/EUCASS2023-019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766,993,3779],"tags":[3824,3826,3823,3822,3825,3827],"class_list":["post-25423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-aerospace-europe-conference-2023","category-events","category-13-space-student-programs","tag-cubesat","tag-hosted-payload","tag-iod","tag-obc","tag-onboard-computer","tag-risk-reduction","category-3766","category-993","category-3779","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25424,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423\/revisions\/25424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}