Quetzal-1's Hardware and Software Designs Released Under Open Licenses as a Stepping Stone to Space

The team behind Quetzal-1, the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala's award-winning 1U CubeSat design, has released its hardware design files and software source code under open licenses — allowing others to follow Guatemala's first satellite into space.

"Quetzal-1 was a 1U CubeSat developed by an engineering team from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG)," the satellite's creators explain. "In 2017, this team was announced as the winner of the KiboCUBE program (a collaboration between the United Nations' Office for Outer Space Affairs, UNOOSA, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA), which enabled us to launch the satellite to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX CRS-20 ISS resupply mission, on March 7th, 2020. From there, the satellite was deployed from JAXA's Kibo module on April 28th of the same year."

With 211 days of operation, having shut down in November 2020, the design of the compact satellite — which represented Guatemala's first to reach space — has been well-proven, but the team has more in store for the project. "Our purpose is to provide a design reference for a satellite that was fully operational for 211 days in orbit, that it may serve as a stepping stone for future novice teams," its creators explain.

"Technology is being continuously democratized, and this is our little grain of sand in aim of doing just that: enabling access to space, and its wondrous possibilities, for everyone."

With that in mind, the project's team has released the satellite's hardware and software under open source licenses. The former includes the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS), Electrical Power System (EPS), and Antenna Deployment Mechanism (ADM); the latter includes the software for both the Arduino-compatible ADCS and EPS and the GNU Radio-based software used for the mission's ground station. Finally, the team has published all data in the open — including full telemetry and all downlinked photos.

Those interested in learning more about the project can find a full background on GitHub, along with links to the hardware and software repositories under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license and GNU General Public License 3.0 license respectively.