Polar Orbiting Infrared Tracking Receiver (POINTR)

Abstract

The Satellites Team of the Stanford Student Space Initiative (SSI) has designed and built Polar-Orbiting Infrared Tracking Receiver (POINTR), a 1U cubesat payload to demonstrate optical-communications technology. Because of the narrow beam divergence of optical signals it is crucial to have reliable and accurate Pointing, Acquisition, and Tracking (PAT) abilities on board the spacecraft. POINTR will demonstrate the use of a silicon MEMS fast steering mirror (FSM) for fine pointing in a cubesat optical receiver by tracking a ground laser beacon. To the authors' knowledge this will be the first in-flight demonstration of such a MEMS device in a cubesat optical receiver. POINTR launched Dec 3rd 2018 on Spaceflight SSO-A: SmallSat Express, as a hosted payload onboard a 3U cubesat Audacy0.