Anton B. Ivanov
CubETH Project Manager
Space Engineering Center EPFL, Swiss Space Center
Switzerland

Biography
Dr. Anton Ivanov is a scientist with the Swiss Space Center. He is currently the project manager for the CubETH Cubesat project and responsible for the Minor in Space Technologies at EPFL. After receiving his PhD in Planetary Science from Caltech in 2000, Dr. Ivanov joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to contribute to Mars Exploration projects, including the Curiosity rover. In 2007, Dr. Ivanov joined Swiss Space Center to lead development of the Concurrent Design Facility and develop small satellite projects and applications.

Abstract


Cubesat projects have become extremely popular in the last 10 years in many universities. These projects have a great reputation for educational and technological goals. We will present analysis of science applications of cubesats and focus on lessons learned from the SwissCube and CubETH projects.

CubETH is a project to evaluate and demonstrate possibilities of low-cost GNSS receivers on a nano-satellite by following the Cubesat standard. The development of this new Swiss cubesat mission is underway at the Swiss Polytechnical Schools, launch is planned for 2016. Scientific goal are: precise orbit determination and estimate of satellite attitude based on a very short baseline together with a number of other experimental measurements. Programmatic goal is to implement this project in cooperation between federal (ETH/EPF domain) and cantonal (FH/HES domain) engineering schools and industrial partners.The educational objective is to involve engineering students from various schools across Switzerland to promote innovative teaching of engineering of complex systems.

In the outlook for the future will present Swiss Space Center plans and analyze the role of government, education institutes and industry from a pragmatic point of view. We explore how microsatellites (1 to 10kg mass) can open new opportunities for innovative applications and services and contribute to improvement of citizen's life.