Investigation of Composite Material for a Remote Sensing CubeSat Structure: An Alternative to Traditional Aluminum Alloys

The CubeSats market is drastically growing leading to the development of smaller sensors that could be accommodated within smaller launch vehicles to comprehensively address most of the earth science needs. The positive spiral emanating from this development has resulted in lower costs, shorter mission development times, and an accelerated absorption of contemporary technologies, and commercial off-the-shelf components for space applications. This paper addresses the structural subsystem of a 3U CubeSat that is designed for glacier monitoring with a camera payload. The structure of a CubeSat must attain its objectives for the static and dynamic forces of the testing and the launch in the zero-gravity space thermal environment. Choosing the right material and structural design is essential in reducing the weight of CubeSat, as the structural elements usually make up a significant proportion of its overall mass. Typically, Aluminum alloys like Al 6061 or 7075 and respective series are widely used in CubeSat structure development. The use of composite material can play a vital role in reducing structural mass. As the 3U CubeSat in this paper is designed for the remote sensing application, reducing structural mass with the use of composite material can give more space for a better camera payload without compromising the structural integrity. The paper focuses on investigating the use of carbon fiber a widely used space-grade composite material by performing structural and thermal analysis on two 3U CubeSat structures with Aluminum 6061 and carbon fiber. A comparative analysis establishes that carbon fiber as the structural material can yield similar stiffness while reducing the structural mass substantially.