A major system in NITESat is the imaging payload. It's correct design and proper operation are critical to the success of the NITESat mission. Consequently, we are building a prototype imaging system, called NITELITE. This prototype will provide an engineering demonstration of the NITESat imaging system. It will allow us to test as much of [...]
The NITESat mission team recently submitted its preliminary design to an independent review board for assessment. The review board examined the preliminary design to ensure that it meets the mission's top-level requirements and is consistent with the mission goals and objectives. The team presented the mission concept of operations, the system architecture, and proposed technical [...]
We participated in a high-altitude balloon (HAB) launch recently. This was a night launch and our goal was to capture images of night-time illumination on the ground. We planned to test the low-light sensitivity of some off-the-shelf imaging systems to define a basic performance benchmark for the NITESat nanosatellite mission. We were testing a hacked [...]
The NITESat nanosatellite mission achieved its first development milestone in September, successfully passing the Mission Concept Review. The independent review panel examined the mission's objectives and the concept for meeting those objectives. All three reviewers found the mission very exciting and provided valuable feedback to the NITESat team. NITESat (Night Imaging & Tracking Experiment Satellite) [...]