The Ryf3Ex (Ryerson Femto Formation Flying Experiment) project consists of a series of planned prototype satellites that will test various femto-satellite technologies and formation architectures.
The RyF3Ex satellites are designed to be completely modular - the primary satellite systems (Attitude Dynamics and Control, Orbital Maneuvering, Command and Data Handling, Communications, Power, Thermal and Structures) will be capable of integration with any sufficiently miniaturized payload, scientific or commercial.
The development of the SSDC CanSat programstemmed from 2006 Ryerson team taking first place at the annual CanSat competition.
Dr. Kumar has now included the design of CanSat satellites in the Ryerson aerospace engineering undergraduate program. This allows students to gain the satisfaction of being involved with the end-to-end life cycle of a complex engineering project from conceptual design, through integration, and test, and concluding with operation of thes system.
Autonomous sation-keeping and formation maintenance of micro- or pico-satellites using minimum fuel preresent one of the most important future space technologies.
This project proposes a novel propellant-less method based on solar radiation pressure (SRP) and aerodynamic forces (AERO), and develops innovative control algorithms to achieve this objective.
The feasibility of the proposed technology will be tested via computer simulation and ground test.