Da Vinci Satellite – Elevating Education

The Da Vinci Satellite is a 2U CubeSatellite that is being developed with the goal to inspire and enthuse the youth to learn more about technology and space travel. The team at Delft University of Technology consists of over 80 Bachelor and Master students from disciplines such as Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics. There are also multiple Precision Engineers part of the team, that have joined from the Leiden Instrumenten Maker School (LIS) in the Netherlands. Through working on the satellite and educational modules, the multidisciplinary team focuses on demystifying space and making it a fun and engaging subject for children in primary schools and high schools. That is why the satellite harbours two novel custom-made payloads on board; the Dice Payload and the BitFlip Payload. The Dice Payload consists of a small chamber with five small aluminium dice of different colours, which will be used by primary school children. In collaboration with the LIS, a special mechanism has been designed to 'roll the dice' in microgravity and clamp them such that a picture of the numbers can be taken with the Earth as a backdrop. After the design, manufacturing, and assembly of the parts, the payload underwent a series of tests. These tests have included multiple Og flight tests and a vibration test. Through the extensive testing, there have been iterative design changes to improve the payload's overall performance and design. The second payload of the Da Vinci Satellite is the BitFlip Payload. This novel payload recently has been tested in a proton accelerator facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute. This subsystem is a stack of PCB's with SRAM that has been designed for high school students. High school students can send a picture of themselves to the satellite where the data will be stored on the SRAMs. Because of the radiation environment in LEO and the susceptibility of the memory, bitflips will occur. These changes in the information from a 1 to a 0 (or the other way around), will result in the information of the picture being changed. When the picture has been compressed using a compression algorithm such as GIF, JPEG, or PNG interesting effects can occur. Once the student will receive the altered picture, they will be able to compare it with the original and learn about space, radiation, compression algorithms, and electronics.