Verification and Testing of a Resource-Constrained CubeSat: On-Orbit Results and Lessons Learned from COSMIC

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Abstract
CubeSat programs are often conducted under severe constraints in budget, personnel, schedule, and knowledge continuity, while still requiring sufficient verification to support mission success. This paper presents the verification, testing, on-orbit operation, and anomaly analysis of COSMIC, a 3U CubeSat jointly developed by Yonsei University, Unmanned Exploration Laboratory (UEL), and UZURO Tech Inc. in less than eleven months from project kickoff to launch. COSMIC adopted a protoflight model approach, prioritized commercial off-the-shelf components with flight heritage and prior laboratory experience, and concentrated limited resources on subsystem, FlatSat, system-level, environmental, communication, and scenario-based testing. The test program is reviewed against the subsequent on-orbit results to identify which verification activities contributed to anomaly prevention, fault isolation, and recovery. The results show that system-level integration testing, thermal vacuum cycle testing, and scenario testing were particularly effective in revealing interface, software, and deployment-related issues before launch and in supporting early orbit recovery. However, the mission also exposed limitations in recovery-logic verification, long-duration software testing, communication robustness, and independent reset paths. Based on these findings, practical recommendations are derived for resource-constrained CubeSat teams seeking to tailor verification activities without simply reducing test rigor.