Systems Development, Assembly and Testing, and Mission Operations for Nanosatellites in the CanX Program

The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) program at the University of Toronto's Space Flight Laboratory provides rapid, cost effective access to space through the use of micro- and nanosatellites. The primary focus of this thesis is the development of the CanX-4/-5 nanosatellite mission, which is intended to demonstrate precise, autonomous formation flying. This involves the development of nominal and contingency operations, system budgets, and requirements to produce a complete system architecture. Also described is the assembly, integration, and testing of flight hardware for this mission. In addition, this thesis addresses the on-orbit operation of CanX-2 and CanX-6/NTS, as it relates to operations planning for CanX-4/-5. The ground station operations for these two nanosatellite missions are described, with particular focus on payload operations and contingencies resulting from on-orbit anomalies. This experience is then related to the development of the CanX-4/-5 ground station software architecture.