“Andes OBC”: a COTS-Based On-Board Computer for Small Satellite Missions

Andes OBC is an onboard computer (OBC) for CubeSat satellite missions built on commercial off-the-shelf components (COTS). A core feature of its design is full redundancy of every component, implemented to significantly enhance operational reliability. Based on the Arm Cortex-M7 microprocessor, it is capable of handling the operations of nanosatellites of various form factors, from 1U to 6U CubeSat platforms. These operations include: power management, input/output (I/O) processing, telemetry and telecommand (TM/TC) from and to Earth stations, and satellite payload management, which can include an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to optimize its operations. In this work, the main design drivers and characteristics are reviewed, and a series of tests successfully conducted on some of the peripherals used to evaluate the proposed OBC architecture are presented.