Flight Software Development for the EIRSAT-1 Mission

The Educational Irish Research Satellite, knownas EIRSAT-1, is a student-led project to design, build, testand launch Ireland’s first satellite. The on-board softwarefor this mission is being developed using Bright Ascension’sGenerationOne Flight Software Development Kit. Thispaper provides an overview of this kit and of EIRSAT-1’son-board software design. Drawing on the team’scontrasting experience with writing entirely customfirmware for the mission’s science payloads, this workdiscusses the impact of using a kit on the softwaredevelopment process. The challenges associated with theeducational nature of this project are the focus of thisdiscussion. The objective of this paper is to provide usefulinformation for other CubeSat teams assessing softwaredevelopment options.