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HuskySat-1 is an artificial satellite designed by students at the University of Washington. It was launched into low Earth orbit on November 2, 2019 aboard the 
Cygnus NG-12 ISS Flight, by a Cygnus spacecraft aboard a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Launch Pad 0 on Wallops Island, Virginia. HuskySat-1 is a CubeSat, which is a type of miniaturized satellite that is used for research and technology demonstration purposes.
The satellite was designed and built by the Husky Satellite Lab in the Advanced Propulsion Laboratory, at the 
University of Washington. It is the first satellite designed by students in Washington state, and its purpose is to demonstrate onboard plasma propulsion and high-gain telemetry capabilities. These technologies are important for enabling CubeSats to operate in low Earth orbit, and could be a precursor for larger CubeSats designed for orbital insertion at the Moon.
NG Cygnus 12 Launch from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia
HuskySat-1 is equipped with a pulsed plasma thruster (PPT) that uses sulfur as a fuel, making it the first PPT of its kind. It will also test an experimental 24 GHz data transmitter that will enable the transfer of more data during the short windows of time when the satellite is visible from the control station.
I worked on designing the communications architecture for the satellite. My primary responsibility was to design a communications software architecture paradigm for the on-board computer systems of the satellite. I also investigated the potential effects of radiation beyond the Van-Allen belts on the flight systems of the CubeSat and proposed a system of Hamming codes to increase data transfer fidelity during data dumps from the satellite to the ground station at the University of Washington.
In my research, I focused on the software architecture challenges faced by the system and proposed a variety of paradigms that could be incorporated into the final flight computer system. I also proposed a client-server architecture for the communications system that could save power, as well as redundancy measures to reduce the chance of data corruption. Overall, the successful launch of HuskySat-1 is a significant achievement for the students and researchers involved, and has the potential to pave the way for future propulsive CubeSat satellite missions.