System architecture of the bcu payload on tatiana-2

In conjunction with the international collaborative project of ESEMS (Experimental Scientific Education Micro Satellite) whose goal is to develop an experimental scientific-education microsatellite with science payloads, a team consisting of professors and students from the National Central University (NCU) has designed and fabricated a set of space flight instruments for space weather studies. The Block of Central University (BCU) made payload has been flown successfully on board Tatiana-2. To our knowledge, the BCU payload is the very first successful satellite payload which has been developed from design and component selection to the completion of the flight module mainly by students and faculty on the NCU campus in Taiwan. This paper describes some details of the engineering effort in building the BCU payload, including sensing devices (ETP and MRM), data processing unit, and power supply. Samples of flight data acquired by BCU are also presented to show that all units of the BCU system and payload-spacecraft interfaces functioned well as expected. The flight data provides direct evidence that the NCU team is capable of developing spaceflight quality instruments for future satellite missions.