Under the auspices of the university’s Binar Space Program at the Space Science and Technology Centre, students and engineers successfully launched Western Australia’s first-ever locally-designed satellite, the Binar-1 CubeSat, in August 2021. 

The satellite, developed entirely using Altium Designer, accompanied a SpaceX commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. Shortly thereafter, Binar-1 was deployed into low-earth orbit to capture images of Western Australia’s coastline and relay them back to Earth. 

Localizing Space Exploration with Homegrown CubeSats

CubeSats are small, lightweight and relatively inexpensive satellites that have been used in low-earth orbit since the early 2000s, deployed alongside commercial and research space missions. One of the first challenges the Binar team had was to create a CubeSat from scratch. CubeSats are traditionally built using kits made in the US or Europe and assembled by students; for Fergus Downey, Engineer and Ph.D. student at Curtin University, and his colleagues, starting from scratch had benefits that extended far beyond the confines of the Curtin University campus. 

“Most universities buy CubeSats and assemble them,” explains Fergus. “We thought it was a wasted opportunity to not learn how to design it ourselves. We approach space exploration from a research perspective—for us, it’s about generating excitement about space. I’d like to think we’re inspiring people to have a go at building something themselves instead of buying CubeSats off the shelf from other countries.”

Building the Next Generation of CubeSats 

For the Binar team, it wasn’t enough to just make their own custom-designed CubeSat; they also wanted to make something smaller and more effective than the multitudes of miniature satellites already in orbit. 

As Fergus explains, “We wanted to shrink the amount of space inside a CubeSat down to create something that was more lightweight and powerful. Initial designs of ours were between 2U and 3U; over the past year, we’ve got the design down to just 1U.”

Their efforts resulted in Binar-1, the first Western Australia-designed spacecraft that was successfully launched into orbit. At 1U, the nanosatellite fully met the CubeSat standard while being substantially more cost-effective and powerful than traditional designs. 

Altium Designer was central to the development of the compact wonder, empowering the team to challenge the dominant size paradigm with the advanced capabilities needed for such a daunting task. 

As Fergus explains, “One of the big goals of Binar-1 was to get all the systems we had designed at Curtin University onto a single PCB that could fit in our 1U CubeSat. The final design looks very different from the initial ones, as we found new ways to separate all the subsystems and distribute all the necessary signal lines and power planes.”

Altium Designer has helped make their ambitious design project much easier. “Productivity is high when working with Altium Designer, and we can implement our changes very quickly,” says Fergus. “The software’s impedance and length matching tools are a must-have for our designs, as well as the Design Rule Check feature, which saved us a lot of unnecessary pain. Knowing how to use the view configuration tool has made routing our microcontrollers and memory very effective as well.”

As Jacob Cook, Binar Space Program Engineer, adds, “Getting components has always been challenging, so Altium Designer’s Manufacturer Part Search integration with premade footprints has been especially helpful. It saves me a lot of design time to be able to directly drop in parts from the search tool. I can route boards significantly faster than I could with other EDA programs.”

Into the Great Wide Open

The success of the Binar-1 launch ignited excitement in Western Australia’s burgeoning space ecosystem and there are six more satellites scheduled for launch in the next 18 months.

But it’s their educational impact that has them the most excited. “Getting high school students excited about careers in space and helping them discover new careers in the Australian space industry is what drives us most,” Jacob volunteers. 

Altium’s educational programs can help support the Binar team with newly expanded curriculums that teach college students how to use Altium Designer and Altium 365, the world’s only cloud platform for PCB design and realization.

“As we start to work on Binar-2, Binar-3, and Binar-4, there will be more people involved with the PCB design process. Altium 365's support in helping all of us to collaborate as well as facilitate our communications and design process will be invaluable," says Fergus