Study and energetic optimization of the electrical supply of a nanosatellite

In recent years, CubeSats gain in popularity among researchers due to their cheapness and lightweight allowing them to conduct space researches and missions for competitive prices. These satellites are mostly launched in low earth orbit where regular eclipses, experienced by the spacecraft, challenges the satellite developers in the design of efficient and reliable power supplies. This thesis aims to study and optimize the power supply of a CubeSat. Therefore, an overview of the CubeSat technology, power generation and energy storage is provided so that the main challenges of space missions are identified. Afterwards, a study and energetic optimization is conducted to determine and select the optimal system configuration. At last, a system implementation is performed along with a failure analysis. Optimization results have shown that many configurations can be selected but robustness should also be taken into account. Therefore, in spite of all considerations, a robust and moderately efficient configuration is preferred rather than a system with maximum efficiency. In addition, the failure analysis has shown that the basic implementation is rather susceptible to failure, but many methods of compensation are available. Therefore, the final implementation is based on the trade-off between complexity and robustness. This thesis sets the ground for optimizing and implementing mission-specific power supplies that could lead to cost saving and time cutting in CubeSat design. But many different design choices, configurations, implementations, tests have been left for future work. For instance, an electrical implementation of the final system, PCB realization, software implementation and measurements can be done to compare the results obtained in this work with the actual system performances.