AlbaCubeSat
On-Board Software (OBSW) Engineering in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the University of Padua.
AlbaCubeSat is a highly ambitious university satellite project developed in direct collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). The mission's goal is to launch a fully functional CubeSat into low Earth orbit. I am part of the core On-Board Software (OBSW) engineering team.
Detumbling Mode
Right after release a satellite tumbles out of control, and nothing else can happen until it settles, so this was the one thing that simply had to work first. The hard part was not writing C, but deciding how to turn attitude physics and magnetic torquers into deterministic logic that trusts only the onboard sensors, with no help from the ground.
Angular velocity damped by the B-dot control law via the magnetorquers.
Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL)
A simulator confirms your assumptions; real hardware challenges them. Once in orbit there is no way to ship a patch, so trust had to come from the actual silicon. That is why we ran the software on the Nanomind A3200 flight computer inside the clean room, letting the real timing, sensor noise, and edge cases surface where a simulated environment tends to hide them.
Designed Around Failure
In space a failure rarely warns you politely, and one wrong call can cost the whole mission. The question behind every decision was not "does it work?" but "what happens when it breaks?".
Zero-Fail Constraint List
- Deterministic behavior, no dynamic allocation
- Safe degradation on unreliable gyroscopes
- Tolerance to a draining battery
- No dependency on ground commands
- Peer review under the ESA standard
Mission Phases
- T+0Release
- T+1Detumbling
- T+2Stable Attitude
- T+3Nominal Ops
The Plenary Team
A presentation event involving all sectors of the AlbaCubeSat UniPd team. I'm on the left wearing a pink shirt. Within the OBSW (On-Board Software) division, we are a group of 5 engineers and computer scientists.
Key Contributions & Achievements
Engineered the critical Detumbling Mode logic in C to stabilize the satellite's angular velocity utilizing the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS).
Conducted physical Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing of the software on the actual Nanomind A3200 onboard computer.
Developed comprehensive unit tests and mocked hardware interfaces (e.g. battery sensors, gyroscopes) to validate failure states and safe-mode triggers.
Collaborated closely with a multidisciplinary space systems team following strict ESA software standards.