alt Hacker NewsFounder/CEO of Albedo here. We published a detailed write-up of our first VLEO satellite mission (Clarity-1) — including imagery, what worked, what broke, and learnings we're taking forward. Happy to answer questions.
https://albedo.com/post/clarity-1-what-worked-and-where-we-g...
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>The drag coefficient was the headline: 12% better than our design target.
Is the drag much better than a regular cubesat? It doesn't look tremendously aerodynamic. From the description I was kind of expecting a design that minimized frontal area.
>Additional surface treatments will improve drag coefficient further.
Is surface drag that much of a contributor at orbital velocity?
The diffraction limit (under 1.22 h* lambda/d) of a 1m optic at 250km in visible light is about 17cm. How can you achieve 10cm resolution?
Can you tell us some war stories about the software your group wrote for the satellite?
Stacks? Testing? Firmware Updates? Programming languages?
Thank you!
How did you manage meaningful attitude control with only torque rods? They would need to big (read: heavy) to be useful — was this just stabilising in inertial frame or active pointing? Mag dipoles in chassis and components tend to lock tumbling satellites into the Earth’s magnetic field. Did you see this? Or did you see atmospheric drag dominate at this altitude?