Bobcat-1, the Ohio University CubeSat: Preliminary Data Analysis

Kevin Croissant, Gregory Jenkins, Ryan McKnight, Brian C. Peters, Sabrina Ugazio and Frank van Graas

Abstract:	Bobcat-1 is a 3-unit CubeSat developed at Ohio University’s Avionics Engineering Center within the Russ College of Engineering and Technology. It was selected for launch through the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) and manifested for flight on Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ElaNa) Mission 31, which launched on October 2, 2020. Bobcat-1 was deployed from the ISS on November 5, 2020. After deployment, the CubeSat started collecting GNSS data which has been downlinked to the ground station at Ohio University. In this paper, the preliminary results from the processing of the collected data from space will be presented. The main scientific objective of the Bobcat-1 mission is to evaluate the performance of interconstellation time offset estimates from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The primary payload on Bobcat-1 is a multi-frequency, multiconstellation NovAtel OEM-719 GNSS receiver, which tracks satellites from GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou and QZSS. The main benefits of a GNSS receiver at LEO is the possibility to obtain data from multiple satellites multiple times a day: given the low orbit (~400 km) and the short orbit period (~90 minutes), the lack of troposphere delay errors, and the low multipath environment. In this paper, the operational status and measurement quality analysis will be presented, including spectrum observations, carrier-to-noise ratio, and solution residuals.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2021 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 25 - 28, 2021
Pages:	625 - 636
Cite this article:	Croissant, Kevin, Jenkins, Gregory, McKnight, Ryan, Peters, Brian C., Ugazio, Sabrina, van Graas, Frank, "Bobcat-1, the Ohio University CubeSat: Preliminary Data Analysis," Proceedings of the 2021 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, January 2021, pp. 625-636. https://doi.org/10.33012/2021.17854
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