Custom Solutions
Space, science and industrial applications
Camera Subassemblies
Components for customised systems
Space, science and industrial applications
Components for customised systems
A 6U CubeSat developed by a UK-based consortium to demonstrate the technology of laser-cooling atoms in space.
Cold atom sensors are a breakthrough technology with potential applications in earth gravity mapping, navigation, and fundamental physics experiments. However, they had never been demonstrated in space.
The CASPA project aimed to:
Within the project, XCAM was responsible for the Electronics and Imaging Subsystem – a set of PC-104 PCBs providing the power and the data interface between the platform and the entire payload, and an imager to capture images of the cold atom cloud within the cold atom trap.
The Electronics Subsystem is at the heart of the CASPA system where it acts as the interface between the platform and the experiment, managing the command, control and power interface to the spacecraft platform, and controlling the cold atom experiment.
Whilst these components have been developed with CASPA in mind, they have been designed to be as modular and flexible as possible. All types of board can be used in combination or individually, to enable their use in many other application types covering a broad range of experiments envisaged for the CubeSat or a small satellite platform.
Based on XCAM’s CubeSat imager heritage, the C3D3 Imager Controller not only controls the camera which will take the magnetooptical trap (MOT) Image, but effectively controls the whole experiment. It does this using three processor cores embedded within its FPGA:
The software in the Communications and Data Processors has already been proven on C3D and C3D2 missions and remained largely unchanged.
The ultimate goal of the Imager Controller is to grab an image of the MOT at its optimum moment determined by an algorithm running in one of the cores of the FPGA. The image is then sent to the platform.
CASPA project, University of Birmingham
The Electronics Subsystem
C3D3 Imager Controller
CASPA successfully demonstrated that a cold atom experiment could be engineered for operation in space:
CEAS Space Journal, Volume 12, pages 539-549, (2020)
No posts selected. Please add posts using the repeater.
2 Stone Circle Road
Round Spinney Industrial Estate
Northampton, NN3 8RF, UK
XCAM Scientific
2 Stone Circle Road
Round Spinney Industrial Estate
Northampton, NN3 8RF, UK
