Hiranya Agarwal

Project 04 of 06 / Space systems

BlueSat ground station

Mechanical design of an antenna pointing system that has to talk to a student built CubeSat in low Earth orbit, on a pass that lasts a few minutes. I led this through 2025 and handed it on.

Role
Mechanical lead
Team
BlueSat, UNSW
Period
2025
Status
Past role, handed on
Hiranya in a BlueSat jacket fastening a screw into a black 1U CubeSat structure with a red screwdriver, circuit boards visible inside.
A 1U structure on the benchAssembling a CubeSat frame at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney, 2025. The ground station points at things this size.

The brief

Turn an orbital communication requirement into hardware somebody can actually build.

A ground station only works if the antenna is where the software thinks it is. My responsibility was the mounts and bracketry around the pointing assembly: the parts that carry the antenna load, hold alignment through motion, and give the electrical and software teams a predictable mechanical interface to command.

System view

The mechanical design sat inside a loop it did not control.

Everything upstream of the bracket is a schedule and a command. Everything downstream is a link budget. The mechanical package had to be honest about both.

  1. Satellite passAn orbital track creates a pointing demand with a hard time window.
  2. ControlSoftware and electrical systems command azimuth and elevation motion.
  3. Pointing hardwareMounts and brackets carry the antenna and hold its alignment.
  4. LinkThe antenna closes the link with the CubeSat.

My contribution

Design, iterate, integrate.

  1. Owned the mechanical package. Led the mount and bracket design for the antenna pointing assembly.
  2. Iterated in CAD. Developed and revised the geometry in SolidWorks as system requirements moved.
  3. Held the interfaces. Worked across the electrical, software and mechanical subteams so the parts still fitted when the requirements changed.
  4. Supported the team beyond CAD. Helped run BlueSat outreach events promoting space engineering at UNSW.
Primary tool
SolidWorks
Context
Multidisciplinary space system

Status

Handed on before the hardware was tested.

Where it stands

I led the mechanical package through 2025 and handed it to the team when I moved on. The ground station was still in development at that point, so there are no pointing accuracy, load or link figures to report here. Anything published since is the team's work, not mine.