Space Hackers fom Lausanne, Switzerland and San Francisco, USA have been working on the TechEdSat CubeSat challenge.

TechEdSat is a 1U CubeSat that will be launched on July 21, 2012 from Tanegashima, Japan aboard the HTV-3 ISS resupply mission. TechEdSat will be among the first CubeSats to be deployed from the ISS, and is investigating the use of Plug and Play software/hardware and intersatellite communication via Iridium and Orbcomm networks.

For this challenge, space hackers must implement a command and control system, utilizing both the OrbComm and Iridium modems as uplink and downlink. The software should be modular to facilitate the easy implementation of future commands, and should be fault tolerant.

A ground segment of the software should include the ability for a laptop (or bonus points for an Apple or Android phone) to issue commands to the spacecraft over Iridium/Orbcomm. The spacecraft segment should be written for a Linux environment able to listen for commands, and have the ability to send arbitrary data packages back to the ground.

Bonus points for relaying data received from the spacecraft automatically to Twitter. Space hackers will be issued interface documentation for Iridium and OrbComm modems, and engineering development hardware for testing. This software has the potential to fly on the TechEdSat mission if completed.

Find out more at https://github.com/AVGP/CubeSatRemote/wiki