10/11/17
After submitting our Critical Design Review data pack version 1.1 a few weeks ago, the EIRSAT-1 team have been planning for the future. At the moment our documents are being reviewed by experts from the European Space Agency. They will send us RIDs in the coming weeks. RIDs are Review Item Discrepancies – these are areas we can improve on and make clearer in our design. Once we receive RIDs we must implement strategies to reply to them. This will culminate in our trip to ESA’s ESTEC facility in the Netherlands in a months time for a Fly Your Satellite! workshop.
As we await these RIDs, we have started planning for the next stage in the process – building and testing. The team have met each week to identify any tests that will need to be carried out on the prototype models of the subsystems – this is called the Engineering Model. Tests will need to be written up in Test Plans and any hardware or test facilities used will need to be identified.
There is a lot happening in the background as we prepare to move to the next stage – including identifying the hardware and software that we need for the satellite. Until now the satellite has existed on paper, in our designs. Now we are starting to see some real parts to the satellite, including an antenna prototype built by the engineers on our team from the UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. It’s incredibly exciting to see the satellite come to life and it makes me excited for the months to come!