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@BIRDSOpenSource

BIRDS Project, Kyushu Institute of Technology

九州工業大学・宇宙システム工学科・革新的宇宙利用実証ラボラトリの公開リポジトリ

Welcome to the BIRDS Open Source Project

The BIRDS program, developed by Kyushu Institute of Technology, is an educational initiative focused on CubeSat development. This repository serves as a central hub for open-sourcing files, code, and designs from the BIRDS program, enabling other entities to utilize and contribute to the advancement of CubeSat technology. The BIRDS Open Source project is committed to demonstrating lean satellite development that is well documented, easy to adapt and debug, and that caters to the needs of the entire satellite development workflow, from satellite design configurations to ground station data collection and analysis.

Take a peek at the website for BIRDS Open Source for more information that may be relelvant to you. We also have a to discuss various issues related to the satellite bus, past webinar recordings and presentations can be found here.

You can click this button to Join the monthly community webinars

About the BIRDS Program:

The BIRDS program provides hands-on training in satellite engineering, project management, and cross-cultural teamwork. Through the development of CubeSats1, students from non-space-faring nations gain practical experience and contribute to global capacity building in space technology.

Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) has been carrying out its BIRDS program since 2015. In the program, inexperienced student members receive training and develop multiple 1U CubeSats. Each BIRDS project develops 1U CubeSats for the capacity building of non-space-faring nations. As of Febuary 2024, six generations of BIRDS projects have been carried out:

The BIRDS program is a unique educational program that provides an excellent opportunity for learning systems engineering, project management, and cross-cultural teamwork, not only conventional space technologies.

The BIRDS BUS is a standard CubeSat bus of electrical design to support the BIRDS program. The design puts an emphasis on ease for beginners to learn and use it. For example, the BIRDS BUS uses a distributed system design, not for its performance but for the easy work sharing and simple coding work involved.

Organisation structure

This treasure trove of information can seem quite daunting to someone on first encounter, so let's go through the repositories we have in this organisation one by one so you can find what you need with ease.

If you're curious about the BIRDS program itself, the BIRDS Program Textbook is readily available in its own repository with the complementary Interface Control documents, both in English and Japanese.

The general organisation of repositories that we have adopted is sectional. So each segment of each satellite has its own repository. For example you will find that for each subsystem of a satellite, is a dedicated repository. The open sourcing of the BIRDS program started after the third generation of the satellite so that is where our documentation starts.

Let's take a look at the BIRDS3 repositories.

Note

BIRDS3 was the most successful satellite in the BIRDS family to date in terms of operation. It was launched on the 17th of April 2019 and operated for 2 years.

Let's take a look at the BIRDS4 repositories.

Let's take a look at the BIRDS5 repositories.

Let's take a look at the BIRDSX repositories.

I like this project, can I help you?

You are welcome 🙂

  • Give us a star ⭐
  • Watch repository to be notified about updates 👀
  • If you will find some bugs, report them in Issues 🐞
  • Try Birds designs on some real computer and let us know how it worked in Discussions. 💬
  • We would greatly appreciate if you would also tell others about this ecosystem, it helps us to improve BIRDS Open Source. Thank you!

Footnotes

  1. A CubeSat is a type of small satellite that is made up of multiple standard cubic units. One CubeSat unit (1U) is an extremely small satellite of 10 x 10 x 10 [cm], with a mass less than 1.33 kg. Originally proposed as an educational tool for space engineering technology, given its small size, light mass, and low budget, cubesats are a very good representative of the “lean satellite” concept recently proposed in an International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) study.

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  1. BIRDS-GeneralDocumentation BIRDS-GeneralDocumentation Public

    BIRDS Program Textbook and Interface Control Documents, in english and japanese

  2. BIRDS-GS_software BIRDS-GS_software Public

    Documentation for the ground station software used for the BIRDS satellites.

    C# 3 1

  3. BIRDSOpenSource.github.io BIRDSOpenSource.github.io Public

    A collection of projects designed to help low budget teams quickly get started with building cube satellites from zero using the BIRDS bus.

    HTML 6 3

Repositories

Showing 10 of 38 repositories
  • Build-A-Satellite Public

    Guides and tutorials designed to help low budget teams quickly get started with building cube satellites from zero using the BIRDS bus.

    BIRDSOpenSource/Build-A-Satellite’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 0 MIT 0 0 0 Updated Oct 31, 2024
  • BIRDSX-CAD Public

    BIRDS-X CAD and Structure Documentation

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-CAD’s past year of commit activity
    0 MIT 0 0 0 Updated Oct 29, 2024
  • .github Public
    BIRDSOpenSource/.github’s past year of commit activity
    0 1 1 0 Updated Oct 29, 2024
  • BIRDSX-AntennaPanel Public

    Documentation, CAD, drawing and procedure for the Antenna Panel of BIRDS-X Dragonfly satellite

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-AntennaPanel’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Oct 26, 2024
  • BIRDSX-ProceduresAndReports Public

    The testing reports and procedures for satellite and its component.

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-ProceduresAndReports’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Oct 26, 2024
  • BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-COM’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Oct 25, 2024
  • BIRDSX-Source_Codes Public

    Source codes useed in the BIRDS-X satellite

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-Source_Codes’s past year of commit activity
    C 2 MIT 0 0 0 Updated Oct 25, 2024
  • BIRDSX-PCB_Design Public

    PCB design documents in BIRDS-X satellite

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-PCB_Design’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Oct 25, 2024
  • BIRDSX-APRS-SM Public

    Documentation for the APRS Student Mission of BIRDS-X

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-APRS-SM’s past year of commit activity
    Python 0 0 0 0 Updated Oct 25, 2024
  • BIRDSX-SolarPanel Public

    Documentation for the Solar Panel Boards used in the BIRDSX Satellite

    BIRDSOpenSource/BIRDSX-SolarPanel’s past year of commit activity
    0 MIT 2 0 0 Updated Oct 24, 2024

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