CubeSat Toolbox

The CubeSat Toolbox for MATLAB® is an educational product for designing CubeSats and analyzing typical CubeSat missions. The toolbox consists of the CubeSat module from the Spacecraft Control Toolbox with a subset of functions from the core toolbox; the Spacecraft Control Toolbox is not required. Please see the API, our comparison table [pdf], and the Getting Started [pdf] guide for more information. Scroll down to purchase online.

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The CubeSat toolbox is a subset of the Spacecraft Control Toolbox.

Applications

The CubeSat Toolbox is applicable to any small satellite project.

  • Trade studies.
  • Visualization.
  • Control system design.
  • CubeSat mission planning.
  • Communications link analysis.
  • Stability analysis of gravity gradient and passive magnetic satellites.
  • Power and thermal analysis.
  • Orbit modeling and simulation.
  • Disturbance modeling.
  • Generate attitude profiles with sequences of primary and secondary alignments.
  • Relative orbit simulations and coordinate transformations.

License

The license for the CubeSat toolbox is for an entire university CubeSat or nanosatellite team. Up to 10 users may simultaneously request technical support. To register tickets you must use university email addresses. Tickets from Gmail, etc. addresses will not be accepted. If purchased for commercial use than the license is per user as with our other toolboxes.

Our software license is perpetual and includes complete source code. All PSS products include 90 days of free telephone support and one year of free email technical support and product updates. Annual maintenance fees provide software updates and additional technical support. For complete details, refer to the Software License Agreement.

Inquiries

Please use the form on the Spacecraft Control Toolbox page.

Purchase Online

Click on the products to add them to your shopping cart.

Features

Attitude Dynamics and Control

  • Gyrostat dynamic model for CubeSats with reaction wheels.
  • Simplified CubeSat geometry model including 6 main faces and deployed solar panels.
  • Calculate drag, gravity gradient, optical perturbations, and magnetic hysteresis.
  • Jacchia 1970 atmospheric density model that accounts for solar activity.
  • Cold gas propulsion model.
  • Magnetic torquer modeling and momentum management.
  • 3 axis PID controller.

Visualization

  • 2D and 3D plotting and ground tracks.
  • Animate the orbits of multiple satellites with sensor cones.
  • View geometry model with face normals.

Orbits

  • ECI to Earth-Fixed coordinate transformations.
  • Convert Kepler elements to Cartesian.
  • J2 orbit perturbations.
  • Propagate Two-Line Element sets (TLEs).

Mission Planning

  • Design a repeating ground track.
  • Compute observation time windows of ground targets.
  • Compute line of sight to GPS satellites.
  • Compute the ground coverage of sensors pointing in arbitrary directions.
  • Track power production, battery charge and average spacecraft temperature.