A characteristic of every inorganic scintillator crystal is its light yield, i.e., the amount emitted scintillation photons per unit energy deposited in crystal. Light yield known to be usually non-linear with energy, which impacts spectroscopic properties scintillator. Cerium-doped gadolinium-aluminium-gallium garnet (GAGG:Ce) a recently developed several interesting properties, make it very p...

RESÜMEE System Architecture and Component Evaluation for ESTCube-2 Electrical Power System This thesis is focused on the architecture of the electrical power system (EPS) and implementations of the various subsystems within the EPS for ESTCube-2 nanosatellite. The main goals are to establish a high level system architecture compatible with the rest of the satellite and investigate solutions for...

Work is progressing on monopropellant thrusters for use as an attitude control system for nanosatellites (satellites whose mass is under 10 kilograms). The thrust range for these microthrusters is on the order of millinewtons. Systems using both hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide are being developed which will offer higher performance than currently available thrusters for nanosatellites. Complete...

Current GPS technologies for satellite navigation are relatively costly, heavy, and utilize a high amount of power. This makes such systems difficult for small satellites to support. In this paper, we describe a lowcost, low-weight, low-power GPS navigation system to support smaller satellites. A key component of our solution involves our patented TIDGET-based receiver design, which takes a bri...

Launched in March 2021, the 3U CubeSat nanosatellite was first ever to use an ultra-lightweight harmonic diffractive lens for Earth remote sensing. We describe platform we used; our 10 mm diameter and 70 focal length synthesis, design, manufacturing; a custom 3D-printed camera housing built from zero-thermal-expansion metal alloy; on-Earth image post-processing with convolutional neural network...

The bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) of the Earth’s surface describes the directional and spectral variation of reflectance of a surface element. It is required for precise determination of important geophysical parameters such as albedo. BRDF can be estimated using reflectance data acquired at large 3D angular spread of solar illumination and detector directions and visib...