The China's First University Satellite: Hangtian-Tsinghua-1 Microsatellite

摘要

The China's first university satellite, named Hangtian-Tsinghua-1, was developed by Tsinghua Space Center (TSC) and Surrey Space Center (SSC) to explore the better, faster, and cheaper way of getting into space. Hangtian-Tsinghua-1 is a modern microsatellite with char-acteristics of small size (0.07~3), light mass (50kg), short developing period (within 20 months), low cost and high performance. The main task of Hangtian-Tsinghua-1 is Earth observation and it also plays the role of technical demonstration of microsatellite constellation for global disaster forecast. As an innovative research, the 3-axis stable attitude control is firstly implemented on Hangtian-Tsinghua-1 microsatellite of 50kg region. In order to meet the 400km ground swath requirement, a camera of Multi-spectral Earth Image System (MEIS) with 40m pixel resolution is mounted 19 ° offset to z-axis of the microsatellite. Furthermore, a radio receiver of selective operating frequency with variable bandwidth in range of 200―400MHz is carried to conducting on-board signal processing experiment. It is worth to note that the concept of software satellite was advanced and tested in this project, the software of on-board computer was up-loaded remotely by ground station after launched in June 28, 2000. The ground station, which located in Tsinghua University, has received plenty of images from Hangtian-Tsinghua-1 microsatellite since July 2000.