Roger Birkeland

Closing Keynote at the FPGA-Forum 2024, Trondheim. 

TITLE: Small Satellites at NTNU; How a university can work on what was earlier NASA’s domain

ABSTRACT:The advent of the CubeSats in early 2000s has paved the way for many new actors in the space hardware community and industry. The CubeSats are “so simple that even a first-year student can make one”. In this talk, we will take a look at some of the enablers for the success of the CubeSats, and then focus on the impact this has had for universities such as NTNU. NTNU has had CubeSat activities continuously for more than the past 20 years, with a big escalation since around 2017. A total of four satellites has been attempted launched. In 2022 both the HYPSO-1 research satellite and the student satellite SelfieSat were successfully launched and have since then had considerable success and impact both at NTNU, nationally and even internationally. In 2024 two new satellites are ready for launch. The hyperspectral instrument of the HYPSO-1 satellite will be presented in greater detail, focusing on both the mission idea and how an advanced optical payload, based on COTS components including FPGAs, could be built by PhD and master students in less than four years from idea to delivery, a pandemic included.