Swayam Satellite

Swayam is a 1-Unit CubeSat built by students at the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) to develop a space-based bi-directional communications platform. The project started in 2008 as an educational activity for undergraduate students at COEP.

The 10 by 10 by 10-centimeter satellite weighs just under one Kilograms, generating power with body-mounted solar cells and using a passive attitude stabilization system featuring permanent magnets to orient the satellite in Earth’s magnetic field. A MEMS gyro provides angular rate data to allow operators insight in the current stabilization status. Communications with the satellite uses the amateur UHF band at 434 to 437MHz. A mission objective for the satellite is to demonstrate the feasibility of using a passive stabilization system for a small communications satellite.

Operating in the Ham radio band, Swayam will support a store-and-forward communications architecture – picking up packets of data from a transmitter and sending it to an intended receiver in a different geo location.