Work · Reconfigurable Space Computing Laboratory
Reconfigurable CubeSat Clusters
CPP Engineering Showcase 2025 - First Place
A compute and communications stack that turns a swarm of 1U CubeSats into a single elastic cluster, with FPGA payloads that change function in orbit and workloads that migrate between satellites in seconds.
The problem
A CubeSat is fixed at launch: whatever logic is on the payload is what it does for the rest of the mission, and a single failure takes that capability with it.
The goal was an orbital cluster that behaves like elastic infrastructure instead of a set of fixed appliances, at a bill of materials a student program could actually build.
What I did
Designed a custom board pairing a low-power CPU with a Xilinx FPGA supporting on-orbit partial reconfiguration, so the fabric can be repurposed after launch.
Ran a lightweight k3s control plane across the swarm so workloads migrate between nodes in seconds, creating self-healing compute and redundant down-links.
Drove the design through cost-down BOM analysis and design-for-manufacture so the architecture stayed buildable rather than theoretical.
Result
The cluster tolerates node loss without losing capability, and down-link redundancy comes from the architecture rather than from spare hardware. The work took First Place at the Cal Poly Pomona Engineering Showcase 2025.
From the report
Bench photographs and measured data from the project's own report.