CubeSat Power Estimation

During the 2023-2024 academic year, as part of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association (YUAA) CubeSat team I helped analyze the power budget of the to-be-launched satellite.

The core of the project was:

1. Creating an accurate 3D model of the satellite in Blender, which, along with accurate solar panel parameters would then be converted into a model fit for the Ansys Systems Tool Kit (STK) simulation software.
2. Use Ansys STK to simulate various satellite attitude and rotation scenarios using approximate orbital parameters of the satellite.
3. Analyze the data in Python to provide information about the power budget of the satellite (to help drive design decisions for the electronics of the satellite)

All the developed 3D models, test scenarios, simulations, their results, and data analysis is available in this Github repository.

For some visuals, here is the 3D Model itself in the simulation software:

as well as an example of one of the main deliverables—a histogram of the total power collected during one sun-phase over a year:

This simulation and data analysis was done in collaboration with the leader of the CubeSat team Elijah Bakaleynik, who also completed the last series of simulation scenarios.