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 programme 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.