Nanosatellites Technology Demonstration

Nowadays, it is widely used the term Nanosatellite when we refer to those satellites whose mass are less than about 10 kg. But it is not only a question of size and power consumption when we talk about this new kind of satellites; it is also a new spacecraft design philosophy. In this paper, we present a small LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite, named ‘NANOSAT’, designed and developed by the Spanish Space Agency INTA (Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial), currently in the manufacturing and testing phase. We will show here the general design philosophy, which has conducted the project to this stage, giving a description of each subsystem inside the satellite as well as the interfaces between them