Fátima Mattiello-Francisco

Carlos Leandro Gomes Batista, Fátima Mattiello-Francisco

Since the early 2000' years, the CubeSats have been growing and getting more and more "space" in the Space industry. Their short development schedule, low cost equipment and piggyback launches create a new way to access the space, provide new services and enable the development of new technologies for processes and applications. That is the case of the Verification and Validation of these missions. As they are cheaper to launch than traditional space missions, CubeSats win by numbers. With more than 1000 CubeSats launched they still achieve less than 50% rate of successful missions and that is caused mainly by poor V&V processes. Model Based approaches are trying to help in these problems as they help software developers along the last years. As complex systems, space products can be helped by the introduction of models in different levels. Operational goals can be achieved by modeling behavioral scenarios and simulating operational procedures. Here, we present a possible modeling solution using a tool that integrates the functionalities of FSM and Statechartes, the ATOM SysVAP (System for Validation of Finite Automatons and Execution Plans). With this tool we are able to model the behaviour of a space mission, from its top level (i.e. system and segments) to its low level (subsystems) and simulate their interactions (operation). With the help of Lua Programming Language, it is possible to generate analysis files, specific scenarios and control internal variables.

Carlos Leandro Gomes Batista, Tania Basso, Fátima Mattiello-Francisco et al.

CubeSat-based nanosatellites are composed of COTS components and rely on its structure and standardized interfaces. A challenge in the nanosatellites context is to adapt the V\&V (Verification and Validation) process to answer to the increase importance of the embedded software, to reduce the artefacts to be delivered aiming at cutting cost and time and still complying with international standards. This work presents an analysis of the strategy adopted in a real nanosatellite for the development of the OBDH software embedded in NanosatC-BR2 mission. The goal is to discuss the impact that the standardization of the structure and interfaces of the CubeSat impose on the V\&V process of the SiS and to highlight the challenges of ``New Space Age`` for the use of existing V\&V techniques and methods.