Eagle Cam
EagleCam CubeSat Camera System:
Imaging the Landing of Lunar Lander Nova-C
Imaging the Landing of Lunar Lander Nova-C
We are excited to be a part of a lunar landing mission!
We are partnering with NASA commercial payload provider Intuitive Machines to send a camera to space that will capture the first-ever selfie of a spacecraft touching down on the moon. Nova-C is a lunar lander designed by Intuitive Machines to deliver small commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon. Nova-C is one of the first three landers selected to be built and launched by the new NASA program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). Launch is planned on a Falcon 9 rocket on 11 October 2021. Here are some main highlights of the project:
Intuitive Machines won NASA/CLPS contract in May 2019, and challenged ERAU to build a deployable camera payload to image the landing from 3rd person point of view.
EagleCam, a 1.5U CubeSat payload that will image the landing in by using multiple cameras with a wide field of view.
3 College of Engineering faculty and their teams are included in the project (Henderson, Rojas, Akbas).
More than 20 students are involved in the project, representing each of the Colleges and all levels.
Estimated cost $350k, 100% funded through philanthropic gifts, grants, and strategic partnerships.
Design, test, and integration in MicaPlex labs at ERAU.
As the software group, we are responsible for developing the software that will perform operational control and data handling on the onboard computers, one on the CubeSat and the other one on the Lunar Lander. The onboard computers are Jetson TX2s, which will control several sensors and a WiFi module on the CubeSat. The sensors include 6 cameras, which will be used to take photos of the Lander.
The software aspects of the project also include designing and coding applications on the core Flight System (cFS), a software framework developed by NASA, to achieve the desired mission outcomes, in addition to writing validation code for various experiments performed on the module. We use emulators on computers and then transfer the developed apps to TX2s.
Please check out the project page for more information about the whole project.