Technical Sessions

Session XII: The Next Generation

Chair: Ron Fevig, University of North Dakota

Thursday, August 13, 2009

10:45 a.m.ROBUSTA, a Student Satellite to Serve the Radiation Effects Community

S. Perez, S. Jarrix, N. J‐H. Roche, J. Boch, J‐R. Vaillé, A. Pénarier, L. Dusseau – Institut d'Electronique du Sud; M. Saleman – Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales

ABSTRACT: Robusta is the first French university cubesat designed with the support of CNES. The aim of the payload experiment is to measure the radiation induced degradation of electronic devices. Flight data will be compared to the results of a novel prediction method taking into account the Enhanced Low Dose Rate Sensitivity. The second interesting point of this project is that it's a real educational project. The organization and derived implications are presented. This paper should highlight the interest of a cubesat‐type satellite from the scientific and educational point of view.

11:00 a.m.Army Space Education: Closing the Gap with Operational Space

MAJ Thomas Pugsley – US Army

ABSTRACT:The Army has made great strides over the last decade to secure a solid foothold and reputation in the space community. Army space professionals have finally gained equity among their peers in the operational space community, and today we see a truly joint space cadre, dedicated to solving tough problems as a team. Unfortunately, the Army has done very little to try to gain equity with its peers concerning space education. This paper outlines the current state of Army Space education, attempting to identify the inequity of space education programs between the services, the impact of this iniquity, as well as to outline what is believed to be the best course of action in order to close this gap. This paper will consider all levels of education within the Army, focusing on the space educational programs of the three major service academies with respect to their specific missions. The paper will then illustrate the steps currently underway at the United States Military Academy to implement its very first regimented, multidiscipline, space educational program, designed to build the foundation for a permanently funded and resourced space educational program in the future.

11:15 a.m.The Promise of Innovation from University Space Systems: Are We Meeting It?

Michael Swartwout – St. Louis University

ABSTRACT: A popular notion among universities is that we are innovation‐drivers in the staid, risk‐adverse spacecraft industry – we are to professional small satellites what small satellites are to the “battlestars”. By contrast, professional industry takes a much different perspective on university‐class spacecraft; these programs are good for attracting students to space and providing valuable pre‐career training, but the actual flight missions are ancillary, even unimportant. Which opinion is correct?

Both are correct. The vast majority of the 111 student‐built spacecraft that have flown have made no innovative contributions. That is not to say that they have been without contribution. In addition to the inarguable benefits to education, many have served as radio Amateur communications, science experiments and even technological demonstrations. But “innovative”? Not so much. However, there have been two innovative contributors, whose contributions are large enough to settle the question: the University of Surrey begat SSTL, which helped create the COTS‐based small satellite industry. Stanford and Cal Poly begat CubeSats, whose contributions are still being created today.

This paper provides an update to our earlier submissions on the history of student‐built spacecraft. Major trends identified in previous years will be re‐examined with new data – especially the bifurcation between larger‐scale, larger‐scope "flagship" programs and small‐scale, reduced‐mission “independents”. In particular, we will demonstrate that the general history of student‐built spacecraft has not been one of innovation, nor of development of new space systems – with those few, extremely noteworthy, exceptions. We will assess why these innovations have not surfaced, and what can be done to change that situation – if indeed it can (or should) be changed.

11:30 a.m.The Naval Postgraduate School SCAT++ CubeSat Program

Christopher Ortiona, Robert Jenkins, Christopher Malone, Lawrence Dorn, Matthew Schroer, Alexander Schulenburg, Paul Oppenheimer, William Crane, Daniel Sakoda, Marcello Romano, Rudolf Panholzer, James Newman – Naval Postgraduate School

ABSTRACT: The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Small Satellite program provides graduate students with hands‐on experience designing, building, and operating satellites. NPS’s first satellite, Petite Amateur Navy Satellite (PANSAT) was deployed through the NASA Hitchhiker program on board STS‐95 on October 29, 1998 and operated for several years. As a follow‐on project to PANSAT, NPS plans to launch the Spacecraft Architecture and Technology Demonstration Satellite 1 (NPSAT1) sometime in the future. Currently the NPS Small Satellite program is evolving to include CubeSats to further enhance the educational and research opportunities at NPS. As ongoing university, government, and commercial satellite programs are showing, the CubeSat standard is proving to be a unique platform for focused research objectives and engineering design innovation. The first CubeSat to be developed at NPS is called the NPS Solar Cell Array Tester (NPS‐SCAT). The overall goal of the project is to gain experience in all phases of CubeSat construction, deployment, and operations by implementing just one of NPSAT1’s many experiments: a solar cell tester. The program is creating a baseline subsystem design for future NPS CubeSats, allowing the NPS Small Satellite program to efficiently use a standard satellite bus for focused research objectives of national interest.

11:45 a.m.TJ³Sat – The First Satellite Developed and Operated by High School Students

Carlos Niederstrasser – Orbital Sciences Corporation; Alishan Hassan, Jake Hermle, Adam Kemp, Alexander McGlothlin, Devan Samant, Joel Stein – Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

ABSTRACT: In 2006 Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) and Orbital Sciences Corporation (Orbital) announced a new initiative to have students from TJHSST design and build the first ever high school satellite. Leveraging the large body of prior work done in the CubeSat community, and under the mentorship of Orbital engineers, TJHSST students are in the advanced prototyping phase of their CubeSat dubbed TJ³Sat. The TJ³Sat payload includes a digital voice synthesizer that is accessible by the general amateur radio community. The TJ³Sat project was conceived from the idea that some things simply cannot be taught by a teacher standing in front of a class. Instead students must be engaged not just through textbooks and lectures, but by actively designing, building, and operating real‐world projects. Over the past three TJHSST students have learned the intricacies of requirements development, subsystem design, space‐qualified soldering techniques and many other elements unique to the aerospace field. Through the TJ³Sat program we will expose a new generation of scientists and engineers to the benefits and excitement of space missions at an age when they are making their first, crucial career decisions.

12:00 p.m.Kentucky Space: A Multi‐University Small Satellite Enterprise

Daniel Erb, Twyman Clements, James Lumpp – University of Kentucky; Benjamin Malphrus – Morehead State University

ABSTRACT: Kentucky Space is a consortium of universities located throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky who have developed a collaboration with the goal of developing technologies and expertise in small satellites. In three years, Kentucky Space has progressed from concept to the launch of three sub‐orbital sounding rocket payloads, the launch of a near‐space high‐altitude balloon mission, and the completion of its first satellite, KySat‐1, which is scheduled to launch in 2010. To support these missions, Kentucky Space has established a network of VHF/UHF ground stations, adapted the 21‐meter radio telescope at Morehead State University to support S‐band communications for Low Earth Orbit satellites, and established fabrication and testing facilities to build and flight qualify small satellites; these include a dedicated cleanroom, thermal‐vacuum facility, vibration facility, and communication test facilities. With students participating throughout the state, the team faces many of the challenges encountered in the aerospace industry today in terms of systems engineering, documentation, communication, scheduling, and management of a distributed team. This paper describes the past, present, and future projects of Kentucky Space and discusses the approaches used by the student team to overcome the challenges of operating a multi‐university program.

12:15 p.m.Big Potential for Small‐Satellite Students

Wayne Shiroma, Justin Akagi, Byron Wolfe, Jason Akagi, Zachary Lee‐Ho, Aaron Ohta – University of Hawaii

ABSTRACT: Small satellites aren’t just enablers of new technologies and systems. They’re enabling a whole new generation of students for whom traditional educational methods don’t seem to work. These students find open‐ended, discovery‐based, group learning to be more effective than the traditional blackboard‐and‐textbook educational paradigm. In addition, small‐satellite project‐based learning not only emphasizes the multidisciplinary aspect of engineering, but also integrates life experiences that result in a different kind of engineer that is more adaptable in today’s rapidly changing work environment.

12:30 p.m.Lessons Learned from the First Swiss Pico‐Satellite: SwissCube

Muriel Noca, Fabien Jordan, Nicolas Steiner, Ted Choueiri, Florian George, Guillaume Roethlisberger, Noémy Scheidegger, Hervé Peter‐Contesse, Maurice Borgeaud, Renato Krpoun, Herbert Shea – Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL)

ABSTRACT: SwissCube is the first pico‐satellite developed by the Space Center at the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL) in partnership with the University of Neuchatel and five engineering schools (HES‐SO, FHNW) in Switzerland. SwissCube will be launch on PSLV in summer 2009. The educational objective of the project is to provide a hands‐on experience of the whole development cycles of satellites, and in parallel enhance flexibility, work autonomy and communication skills in a team composed of about 15 laboratories. SwissCube primary science objective is to measure the intensity of the airglow, a thin luminescence layer in the upper atmosphere that emits in near‐infrared. For that purpose, a custom made telescope with a CMOS detector was designed. The concept for a low‐cost Earth‐sensor will also be validated with this telescope. The project built three models (Engineering Qualification Model, Flight Model, and Flight Spare) and extensively tested the EQM. This paper will present the project organization, mission, and satellite description. It will outline the capabilities and performance of the satellite as characterized during the test campaign. Technical as well as programmatic lessons learned will be addressed. Flight results will also be discussed if available.

Alternate  The Oculus: A Nanosatellite for Space Situational Awareness

Lyon King, Philip Hohnstadt, Jeffrey Katalenich, Peter Radecki, Thomas Venturino – Michigan Technological University

ABSTRACT: As a part of the Air Force’s University Nanosatellite Program, Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) has designed and built a nanosatellite for Space Situational Awareness (SSA) research. The Oculus has the capability to visually detect and monitor resident space objects (RSOs) using space‐to‐space imagers as well as the ability to perform known attitude maneuvers while flying over U.S. observatories in order to anchor models and algorithms used to determine spacecraft attitude from unresolved ground imagery. Over 150 students at Michigan Tech have designed and built the Oculus, a three‐axis‐controlled nanosatellite equipped with two visible imagers, releasable free‐flying imaging targets, and a sophisticated computing and image processing system.

Alternate  From the Delfi‐C³ Nano‐Satellite Towards the Delfi‐n3Xt Nano‐Satellite

G.F. Brouwer, J. Bouwmeester – Delft University of Technology

ABSTRACT: On April 29, 2008, the first 3‐unit CubeSat of the Delft University of Technology, Delfi‐C³, was launched on a PSLV‐C9 rocket and is operational. The objectives of the Delfi‐C³ project were successfully fulfilled. Currently students are working on its successor Delfi‐n3Xt. Both satellites are developments of the faculties of Aerospace and Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS).

The paper starts with an overview of results and lessons learned from the Delfi‐C³ development and the mission with emphasis on sub‐system development, satellite design, manufacturing, assembly, integration and test. Subsequently an assessment is presented about differences and improvements from Delfi‐C³ towards Delfi‐n3Xt in view of the satellite development line. In a comparison common aspects and differences are addressed; both in hardware and project approach: mission goals and objectives, custom structure design, Electrical Power Subsystem with local protection circuits and Maximum Power Point Tracking, combination of UHF/VHF antennae, addition of S‐band antenna, a new Command and Data Handling Subsystem, an Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem with sensors and actuators for 3‐axis attitude control, satellite testing and adapted operations approach. Finally the payloads of Delfi‐n3Xt: ITRX, MPS, SDM, SPLASH, T3µPS and some options are addressed.