Contribution to the Development of an Optical Payload for an Educational Nanosatellite

Nanosatellites have overcome the trial missions and become competitive solutions for various applications such as communication, remote sensing, navigation, etc. In this context, the ground should be prepared to promote this a new space trend in the local sectors that could contribute to the industrial aerospace ecosystem, i.e. the manufacturing sector, Algerian universities and companies that have the potential to exploit these new products. Through a training platform (PEDAGO-SAT) currently being developed at CDS, we propose an educational support tool for the academic community and researchers, intending in practice to approach development thematic of certain nanosatellite functionalities or applications (sensors, actuators, payloads, power system, attitude determination and control, etc.). this work is focusing on the payload side, proposing a preliminary architecture based on a low-cost imager intended to be embarked on this nanosatellite in order to cover, in laboratory, the processing of an optical mission, imaging, storing and down-link data via the radio frequency (RF) chain. This imaging system comprises a basic RGB camera managed by a front-end electronic module for image capture and a storage. The time tagging of image capture and downloading will be handled by onboard computer (OBC).