This week’s episode of NASA’s Space to Ground report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Explore Your Project Ideas for Space Station
Have a science or technology idea? Flying experiments on the International Space Station is a unique opportunity to eliminate gravity as a variable, provide exposure to vacuum and radiation, and have a clear view of the Earth and universe. For more information on how you can conduct your research in microgravity, visit www.nasa.gov/stationopportunities
** What Launches to Space on SpaceX’s Next Cargo Mission?
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will deliver supplies and critical materials to directly support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations that will occur aboard the International Space Station for current and future crews. Learn more about CRS-18: https://go.nasa.gov/2L9ioX7
** NASA’s webcast of the SpaceX CRS-18 cargo mission to the ISS: Includes discussion and reports on ISS R&D.
Students are in the final stages of progression from using 3-D printed plastic prototypes to working with space-age materials. The Robertsville Rams’ so-called Ramsat will help study regrowth of forests in the Smokies from space.
The student group, mentored by professionals at nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are awaiting word from NASA on which launch would send up their cubesat as secondary payload to the International Space Station.
At SDSM&T, a small group of engineering students are working to take the cubesat to a new level through NASA’s cubesate launch initiative.
“We need to be able to use a camera to figure out where a cubesat is relative to another cubesat,” said Skye Rutan-Bedard, undergraduate researcher.
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The goal is to communicate between multiple cubesats, getting them close together in space.
“By introducing better technology for getting these cubesats to localize, when they’re close to each other they can produce densely packed constellations and also means we can experiment with docking and getting individual cubesats to dock in orbit,” said Rutan-Bedard.
University of Arizona researchers will use $3 million in NASA funding over three years to research the low-gravity surface environments of asteroids, and to provide students from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to design, build and operate CubeSats, or miniature satellites at the UA.
The project was selected through NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project Institutional Research Opportunity, or MIRO, program. The UA, which was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2018, is one of eight institutions to receive a share of more than $8.2 million in cooperative agreements awarded through the MIRO program.
“This project will help us understand asteroid surface geophysics in a way that no one has done before,” said Erik Asphaug, deputy principal investigator for the project and a professor in the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “And the students get to participate in a low-cost endeavor that has huge implications for how we work with asteroids in near-Earth space.”
** Univ. Central Florida Q-PACE CubeSat to study how small dust particles grew into planets:
In the very early stages of planet formation, dust grains trapped in a disk around the young star gently collide with each other, sticking and growing into bigger aggregates. Similarly, particles in planetary rings collide at very low relative velocities and form aggregates leading to many an observed features of Saturn’s rings for example. To better understand these low-velocity collisions and the growth of aggregates, microgravity experiments observing multi-particles systems are required. In particular, collision data for µm to cm-sized particles will help closing the current gap in knowledge of how dust grows into km-sized bodies, as well as better our understanding of particle dynamics in planetary rings.
Q-PACE (CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment) will observe a set of 0.1 mm to cm-sized particles colliding and growing under microgravity conditions. This 3U CubeSat will allow that inherits its format from the NanoRocks experiment currently on the International Space Station will allow for the observation of particle dynamical evolution and growth for an unprecedented duration in time of several years.
This Sunday, a Falcon 9 rocket will launch a SpaceX Dragon capsule that will rendezvous with the International Space Station. Part of this mission will include RFTSat, developed by a team of Northwest Nazarene University (Boise, Idaho) led by Prof. Joshua Griffin and a team of Georgia Tech Researchers in ECE.
This CubeSat experiment will have a unique RF energy-harvesting radio designed and built by the Georgia Tech Propagation Group. PhD student researcher Cheng Qi has built a one-of-a-kind microwave backscatter reader and tag-sensor combo that will drive the mission science package.
The low-powered reader designed by our team deploys a sensor that unfurls a distance away from the spacecraft. The reader then energizes and receives backscatter information from the device using a 5.8 GHz transmission. The launch info can be tracked here. Interesting articles on the launch can be found here and here.
The project was funded by NASA, but could not have been completed without private matching funds from the Space Solar Power Institute. Complete with generator, retrodirective antenna, and rectenna harvester, the radio package qualifies as the first microwave space-based solar power satellite ever tested — despite the somewhat limited 1m range. You have to start somewhere!
RFTSat (Radio Frequency Tag Satellite) CubeSat built by teams at Northwest Nazarene University and Georgia Tech. It will demonstrate RF energy harvesting and backscatter communication.
Professor Bland, from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said a Curtin team of 12 staff and student engineers developed the miniaturised satellite.
“The Curtin team has managed to put all the systems required to operate the satellite, including the power, computer, steering and communications, on a single eight-layer printed circuit board, which at 10cm by 10cm by 2.5cm is about the size of a rather small sandwich,” Professor Bland said.
“Having everything on a single circuit board means there is more room for what the satellite is carrying, which in this case will be a camera that will capture beautiful images of Australia taken from orbit.”
A diagram of the CubeSat in development in the Binar Cubesat Program at Curing University.
Three Virginia university satellites were deployed into nearly simultaneous orbit from the International Space Station via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer at 10:50 a.m. EDT this morning. The Virginia CubeSat Constellation mission is a collaborative project of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium and four of its member universities: Old Dominion University (ODU), Virginia Tech (VT), University of Virginia (UVA), and Hampton University (HU). The three nano-satellites, each about 4 inches cubed and weighing approximately 3 pounds, have been developed and instrumented (one each at ODU, VT and UVA) to obtain measurements of atmospheric properties and quantify atmospheric density with respect to orbital decay.
Deployment of three Virginia CubeSat Constellation satellites from the ISS. Photo credits: Virginia Space Grant Consortium
Data collected will ultimately contribute to the scientific knowledge base around orbital decay and will be widely shared. Ground stations at UVA, ODU and Virginia Tech will now begin making contact with their satellites. Data analysis will take place using an analytical tool being developed by students from Hampton University’s Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Department.
“To know that all three satellites are now in orbit is extremely gratifying. Kudos to the students who have worked hard and gained immeasurable knowledge and experience from participating in this student-led mission and to the faculty who have advised them,” said Mary Sandy, Virginia Space Grant director and mission principal investigator. “Achieving Earth orbit is a huge mission milestone. These are the first student-developed satellites in orbit for all three of the universities.”
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More than 150 undergraduate students across many disciplines at the participating universities have worked on the mission for the past three years under the guidance of faculty advisors
KRAKsat is a project focused on sending scientific satellite into space, made by students of University of Science and Technology and Jagiellonian University. Not only it is one of the first Cubesat type satellites in Poland but also the first satellite in the world which uses magnetic liquid, called ferrofluid, for orientation control.
A CubeSat from the Polish company SatRevolution was also deployed from the ISS along with KRAKsat. Find updates on the two projects at
UPDATE: The #LightSail2 mission team has opted to spend another day testing the spacecraft’s attitude control system. Sail deployment now expected no earlier than Tuesday, 9 July. The spacecraft is healthy. https://t.co/PvaKKe0iIr
— Planetary Society (@exploreplanets) July 8, 2019
“Merritt Island High School students are photographed at the Kennedy Space Center with StangSat – a cube satellite (CubeSat) that was built and developed by students at the school. StangSat [launched] on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as part of the Department of Defense Space Test Program-2 mission, managed by the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center… Credits: NASA/Shaun Daly”** Georgia Tech’s Prox-1 with LightSail-2 was successfully put into orbit by the Falcon Heavy as well. Prox-1 was built by Georgia Tech students with funding from the University Nanosat Program (UNP) and LightSail-2 was built by a team led by Ecliptic Enterprises and funded by the Planetary Society.
The sail’s cubesat will be ejected from Prox-1 this week:
LightSail 2 team members will soon converge at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California, where the spacecraft’s mission control is located. Once LightSail 2 is released from Prox-1 on 2 July, the team will spend several days checking out the CubeSat’s systems before commanding its dual-sided solar panels to deploy. Following that, the spacecraft’s solar sails will be deployed, roughly 2 weeks in total from launch day.
** Students at Cal State Poly at San Luis Obispo were involved closely with LightSail-2 and with LEO (Launch Environment Observer) cubesat also on board the FH:
Designed and built by a team of nine students pursuing a Master’s degree with Space Systems and Technology Concentration, MYSAT-2 features significant upgrades from MYSAT-1. Its primary mission is to enable students to design, implement, and test new Attitude Determination and Control (ADC) Algorithms, developed by the Khalifa University students. The algorithms help determine a CubeSat’s orientation in space, and are estimated to be 15 to 20 percent more power-efficient, in comparison with similar algorithms implemented on other spacecrafts. If successful, the new algorithms will establish the UAE as a contributor to the global space industry.
