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Getting started

Welcome to the Orbital Docs! Here you will find all codebase-related documentation.

UW Orbital is a student design team at the University of Waterloo participating in the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge (CSDC) - a competition held every two years and involving a dozen universities from across Canada. Teams design a 3U CubeSat with unique missions and payloads and undergo launch readiness evaluations such as vibration testing. The winning team earns the opportunity to have its launch costs funded by the competition.

You can find out more on our site: https://www.uworbital.com

Software is a subteam of Orbital consisting of two major code projects: the ground station and the satellite.

Ground station related code includes frontends that operators can interact with as well as software that interfaces with the satellite. The ground station stack is primarily built with Python and React.

The satellite related code includes firmware for the onboard computer (OBC) and electrical systems, such as the BMS (Battery Management System). This is a major part of the codebase and allows the software team to support the work of the mechanical and electrical subteams.

Don’t know where to go first? Try one of the following links!


Happy coding! 🚀