Before any work should ever be carried out, you must always record the requirements you need to meet. These can come from the customer, mission needs, and standards that you'll need to adhere to from launch vehicles and space organizations such as ESA, NASA, ISRO, JAXA, or Roscosmos.

Key Activities in Requirements Phase

• Map out mission processes: Include testing, launch, and mission operations to help define requirements for each subsystem
• Begin initial FMEA: Identify potential issues that could be avoided early in the process
• Identify subsystems: Define specific requirements for thermal, electrical, communications, ADCS, power, and other subsystems
• Focus on minimum requirements: Prioritize what allows your satellite to perform its mission; save "nice to have" ideas for future iterations

This is when you research potential solutions that will enable the team to develop a satellite that meets mission requirements. It's valuable to investigate whether a solution to your problems has already been developed or if similar problems have been solved.

Recommended Research Sources

• Patents: Discover innovative solutions and understand existing IP
• Academic papers: Access cutting-edge research and methodologies
• Standards: Review space agency and industry standards
• Industrial magazines: Stay current with industry trends
• Experts in your field: Gain insights from experienced professionals
• Suppliers: Learn about available components and technologies
• Networking events: Connect with industry professionals

Once requirements and project scope have been identified and agreed upon, it's time to begin developing initial concepts for your satellite and subsystems. But before you jump to 3D modeling, sketch out your ideas first.

Concept Development Best Practices

• Break down the satellite: Divide into subsystems and map how they'll interact
• Consider manufacturing early: Will components be turned, milled, or 3D printed? Will the chassis be a box extrusion, bolted panels, injection molded, forged, or bent sheet metal?
• Avoid costly rework: Understanding manufacturing constraints early prevents having to redo 3D models
• Use volume claims: Create volume allocations for each subassembly (payload, radio, ADCS, etc.) to identify potential clashes before they arise
• Generate multiple concepts: Brainstorm with your team—more concepts make it easier to cover all requirements

Concept Selection Strategy

Once you've developed concepts and reviewed them with the team, select the most promising designs to progress further. Advance the top 3 designs—sometimes you'll need to revert to a previously rejected concept when new information, scope changes, or requirements make the "best" design unsuitable.

Once you've identified the most promising designs, it's time to add more detail to your concepts—enough to carry out a second down-selection where you'll choose the most viable design for your satellite. After selecting your concept, finalize that design so you can proceed to prototyping and testing.

Critical Activities in Detailed Design

• FMEA Analysis: Identify potential pitfalls in your design before they happen
• Manufacturing Process Mapping: Map out manufacturing and assembly processes for each component and assembly
• Tolerance Analysis: Ensure components fit together properly with appropriate clearances
• Poke-Yoke Implementation: Design mistake-proofing features into your satellite

In the prototyping stage, you'll carry out various functional tests of each component and subassembly to prove out working concepts. But before any testing, you should create a Design of Experiments (DoE) for each test you want to conduct. This helps with project scheduling and ensures you're testing components in conditions that replicate their actual application.

Benefits of Subsystem Testing

By testing each subsystem individually, you can spot potential failures that can be fixed before integrating your satellite. This helps debug your system when you assemble everything—if something fails, you know it's likely an integration issue since everything was tested beforehand.

Root Cause Analysis

The Ishikawa analysis and 5 Whys tools can help you identify the root cause for each issue you face during the prototyping phase.

Once the testing and prototyping phase is finished, you can finalize the design and manufacture the flight model for environmental testing.

Once your satellite prototype is working and meets your or your customer's requirements, it's time to qualify it for launch. For environmental testing, you should refer to the relevant standards from your space agency (NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO, Roscosmos, or China National Space Administration) or launch vehicle requirements.

Testing Requirements

A Design of Experiments (DoE) for these environmental tests should be created, as your testing center will require information about testing levels and your satellite's attributes. This ensures you test to the required standards.

Your satellite has successfully completed its testing campaign and is now ready for launch! Follow your launch provider's requirements and the various legal requirements for your mission.

Post-Launch Documentation

Once your mission begins, it's valuable to reflect on the project and keep the lessons learned documentation up to date, ensuring everything is recorded. You may need to repeat the same mission or develop a slightly different payload in the future—having this information available will prevent you from having to relearn everything.