… NASA launched a University of Florida satellite that could help improve the accuracy of timing-sensitive satellites, such as GPS.
The satellite is more than 500 kilometers (315 miles) above Earth, orbiting at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour.
“We’ve spent five and a half years to get to this point, and the launch is always the riskiest part,” said UF mechanical and aerospace engineering Associate Professor John Conklin. “Having passed that hurdle, it feels great.”
The UF satellite was one of 13 research cube satellites launched by Rocket Lab Electron from New Zealand as part of NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program. The goal of UF’s research from space is to improve time-transfer synchronizing systems through laser technology. Systems like GPS synchronize their times through radio waves, which have a higher delay in the atmosphere and also a higher error rate.
The University Würzburg Experimental Satellite 4 (UWE-4) is the most recent project within the UWE CubeSat family. This 1U (one unit) CubeSat will incorporate for the first time in the UWE program a propulsion system. The satellite is scheduled for launch on board a Soyuz-2 mission using a Fregat upper stage in December 2018.
But laser communications also have a significant drawback: because laser beams are much more focused than radio waves, they need to be pointed with much greater precision at receivers on the ground.
The MIT team developed a laser-pointing platform about the size of a coffee mug that uses a mirror, smaller than a fingernail, to bounce the laser down toward a ground receiver. The platform can adjust the angle of the mirror to change the laser’s direction.
The Israeli non-profit SpaceIL organization now expects SpaceX to launch its lunar lander mission in February. SpaceIL was a competitor in the Google Lunar XPRIZE contest, which ended before any entrant reached the Moon. However, SpaceIL and several other GLXP entrants are continuing with plans to send landers to the lunar surface. Recently, for example, three former GLXP entrants are involved in partnerships with NASA to participant in the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Delivery program in which NASA will pay commercial companies to take technology and scientific experiment payloads to the Moon.
YEHUD, Dec. 17 – Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) presented today at IAI’s Space Division a time capsule that will travel to the moon — and remain there indefinitely — with the first Israeli spacecraft, which will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in February, 2019.
The SpaceIL lunar spacecraft. Photo by Yoav Weiss
The time capsule consists of three discs, each containing hundreds of digital files. Included among the files, which will travel to the moon inside SpaceIL’s lunar spacecraft, are: Details about the spacecraft and the crew building it; national symbols, like Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the Bible, Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah”, and the Israeli flag; cultural objects; materials – paintings, for example – collected over many years from the public for sending to the moon; dictionaries in 27 languages and encyclopedias, an indication of knowledge accumulated by all humanity thus far; Israeli songs; the Wayfarer’s Prayer; books of art and science and Israeli literature; information about Israeli scientific and technological discoveries and developments that influenced the world; photos Israel’s landscapes and of leading figures in Israeli culture; a children’s book that was inspired by SpaceIL’s mission to the moon.
The time capsule, along with the spacecraft, will remain on the Moon indefinitely, even after completing Israel’s first lunar mission. With no plans to return to Earth, the spacecraft and information within the time capsule’s disks will possibly be found and distributed by future generations.
Time capsule data disks to go to the Moon on SpaceIL lander. Photo by Yoav Weiss
In early 2019, the spacecraft, recently named Beresheet (the Hebrew word for Genesis), will launch alongside other satellites as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The precise launch date remains undetermined, as SpaceIL awaits final confirmation from the launch company.
“This is another step on our way to the moon,” said Ido Anteby, CEO of SpaceIL. “Inserting the disks into the spacecraft, which is a real “time capsule,” indicates the spacecraft’s readiness to blast off from the launch site in a few weeks. SpaceIL’s crews and IAI have completed testing of the spacecraft and its systems, and are preparing for the beginning of the amazing and complex journey that exemplifies innovation, creativity and courage. The spacecraft’s historic journey, which also includes a scientific mission, makes a significant contribution to advancing the space industry and the subject of space in Israel.”
Yonatan Winetraub, one of three SpaceIL founders, said, as he inserted the time capsule into a spacecraft:
“This is a very emotional moment. We do not know how long the spacecraft and the time capsule will remain on the moon. It is very possible that future generations will find this information and want to learn more about this historic moment.”
Opher Doron, IAI’s Space Division General Manager, said:
“We are proud to be the first non-governmental entity in the world to go to the moon. Landing on the moon was for many years a little-discussed topic among the public, but recently we see growing interest as world superpowers seek to return to the moon in a variety of commercial missions. There is no doubt that the technological knowledge acquired by IAI during the development and construction of Beresheet, together with Space IL and combined with the space capabilities developed over more than 30 years at IAI, puts us at the global forefront in the ability to complete lunar missions.”
The spacecraft, whose construction was carried out at IAI’s Space Division, successfully completed a series of recent tests to examine the integration of systems, and a series of complex experiments aimed at testing its durability. Concurrently, validation and verification tests checked the function of the spacecraft in scenarios it could experience during the mission. Since actual space conditions cannot be replicated, tests are carried out in part by a SpaceIL simulator that mimics space conditions and part on the spacecraft itself. Next, SpaceIL will soon ship the spacecraft to the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In October, SpaceIL and the Israeli Space Agency announced a collaboration with NASA that will enable SpaceIL to improve its ability to track and communicate with the spacecraft before, during, and after landing on the moon. Two weeks ago a retro-reflector from NASA was installed on the spacecraft, an instrument that reflects laser beams and will enable NASA to precisely locate the spacecraft on the lunar surface after the landing. SpaceIL, the Israel Space Agency and NASA also agreed that NASA will have access to data gathered by the magnetometer installed aboard the Israeli spacecraft. The instrument, which was developed in collaboration with Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, will measure the magnetic field on and above the landing site.
About SpaceIL: SpaceIL is a non-profit organization established in 2011 aiming to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon. The organization was founded by three young engineers: Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub who answered the international challenge presented by Google Lunar XPRIZE: to build, launch and land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon. SpaceIL was the only Israeli representative. In October 2015, SpaceIL reached a dramatic project milestone by becoming the first team to announce a signed launch contract, that symbolizes an actual “ticket to the Moon”. In January 2017, SpaceIL became one of the competition’s five finalists. The competition officially ended with no winners in March 31, 2018, after Google ended their sponsorship.
Regardless of the competition, SpaceIL is committed to continue and complete its mission, to land on the Moon and to the advancement of science and technology education in Israel.
SpaceIL is actively working to create an Israeli “Apollo Effect.” SpaceIL is committed to inspiring the next generation in Israel and around the world to choose to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
The launch will take place on an American SpaceX rocket in first quarter of 2019, and the Moon landing will be at the end of a two-month journey in space, after the launch.Read More
The small “CubeSail” satellite, more than a decade in the making, is set to launch sometime after 10 p.m. from New Zealand, hitching a ride on the Electron rocket from the commercial space company Rocket Lab.
Designed and built by UI engineering students and CU Aerospace, a Champaign technology firm, CubeSail will demonstrate a new technique for steering a “solar sail,” a solar-powered satellite propulsion system.
NASA has enabled the deployment of two small research satellites, or CubeSats, developed by a middle school and high school. These CubeSat missions were selected through the CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) as the 24th installment of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) missions. The ELaNa 24 mission embarked on the first Spaceflight Industries contracted small payload mission for NASA on a Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off Dec. 3 at 10:32 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Over the past three years, more than 200 students have been involved in the design, development and construction of these CubeSats that will be deployed.
The new laser-pointing platform for CubeSats, which is detailed in the journal Optical Engineering, enables CubeSats to downlink data using fewer onboard resources at significantly higher rates than is currently possible. Rather than send down only a few images each time a CubeSat passes over a ground station, the satellites should be able to downlink thousands of high-resolution images with each flyby.
“To obtain valuable insights from Earth observations, hyperspectral images, which take images at many wavelengths and create terabytes of data, and which are really hard for CubeSats to get down, can be used,” says Kerri Cahoy, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. “But with a high-rate lasercom system you’d be able to send these detailed images down quickly. And I think this capability will make the whole CubeSat approach, using a lot of satellites in orbit so you can get global and real-time coverage, more of a reality.”
“This was a big mission for us with a tight schedule,” said Grigory Heaton, a senior studying aerospace engineering and physics, who is the co-mission lead for the ISX mission for PolySat, the student-run research lab. “Most of the assembly occurred last winter. It’s awesome that we get to have this spacecraft launched while most of the students who worked on the assembly itself are still here at Cal Poly.”
ISX will be launched into an orbit with an altitude of about 500 kilometers — about 30 miles higher than the team’s last satellite, DAVE, or Damping and Vibrations Experiment, which launched in September from Vandenberg Air Force Base. ISX will be “in a fairly polar orbit, so the satellite will fly over almost all points on Earth at some point,” Heaton said.
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“This is also our lab’s first time launching a satellite on a launch that is all CubeSats. Every other time we’ve launched, the satellite has been behind a much bigger satellite. So it’s pretty cool that our satellite actually gets to be inside the fairing as part of the main payload.”
PolySat is a multidisciplinary and independent lab made up of students from a variety of majors. ISX team members include students studying aerospace, computer, electrical, mechanical and software engineering as well as computer science and physics.
JY1Sat, launched on December 3 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as part of the SpaceX SSO-A: SmallSat Express launch, has been designated as Jordan OSCAR 97 (JO-97). The 1U CubeSat is a project of the Crown Prince Foundation of Jordan. Telemetry has been received and decoded around the world since the launch.
A team of students from the University of Southern Indiana designed and built a satellite that launched last week on a SpaceX rocket heading for the International Space Station. The satellite will collect data for NASA research until the end of its life cycle in January 2020.
Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane says the students worked on the satellite as part of the multi-year, undergraduate Nano Ionospheric Temperature Explorer, or UNITE, CubeSat project. USI student Ryan Loehrlein, who is also an intern at NSWC Crane, called working on the NASA-funded project a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Rocket Lab today successfully launched an Electron rocket from the Launch Complex 1 on Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand. The vehicle reached low earth orbit and its kick stage later circularized its orbit and then deployed 13 small satellites sponsored by NASA, including several university built CubeSats:
Here is a view of the liftoff from a nearby observer:
ELaNa-19 mission launches on Rocketlab Electron. Photo credit: Trevor Mahlmann
Huntington Beach, California – December 16, 2018 – US small satellite launch company Rocket Lab has launched its third orbital mission of 2018, successfully deploying satellites to orbit for NASA. The mission, designated Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa)-19 , took place just over a month after Rocket Lab’s last successful orbital launch, ‘It’s Business Time.’ Rocket Lab has launched a total of 24 satellites to orbit in 2018.
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 UTC, Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle successfully lifted off at 06:33 UTC (19:33 NZDT) from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula. After being launched to an elliptical orbit, Electron’s Curie engine-powered kick stage separated from the vehicle’s second stage before circularizing to a 500×500 km orbit at an 85 degree inclination. By 56 minutes into the mission, the 13 satellites on board were individually deployed to their precise, designated orbits.
Until now, launch opportunities for small satellites have mostly been limited to rideshare-type arrangements, flying only when space is available on large launch vehicles. This mission, awarded under a Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) Agreement, marks the first time NASA CubeSats received a dedicated ride to orbit on a commercial launch vehicle. VCLS is managed by NASA’s Launch Services Program headquartered at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck says the ELaNa-19 mission represents a forward-thinking approach from NASA to acquiring launch services and recognizes the increasingly significant role small satellites are playing in exploration, technology demonstration, research and education.
[ Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck says, ]
“The ELaNa-19 mission was a significant one for NASA, the Rocket Lab team and the small satellite industry overall. To launch two missions just five weeks apart, and in the first year of orbital flights, is unprecedented. It’s exactly what the small satellite industry desperately needs, and Rocket Lab is proud to be delivering it. Regular and reliable launch is now a reality for small satellites. The wait is over,” […] “We’re providing small satellite customers with more control than they’ve ever had, enabling them to launch on their own schedule, to precise orbits, as frequently as they need to.”
NASA ELaNa-19 Mission Manager Justin Treptow adds,
“The CubeSats of ELaNa-19 represent a large variety of scientific objectives and technology demonstrations. With this the first launch of a Venture Class Launch Service on the Rocket Lab Electron, NASA now has an option to match our small satellite missions with a dedicated small launch vehicle to place these satellites in an optimal orbit to achieve big results.”
The next Rocket Lab Electron vehicle will be on the pad at Launch Complex 1 in January 2019. For real-time updates and mission announcements, follow Rocket Lab on Twitter @RocketLab.
On Tuesday, December 4, UNC Wilmington successfully launched their 3U CubeSat, about the size of a loaf of bread, Seahawk-1, along with 48 other CubeSats aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Seahawk-1 is now in a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit studying oceans via the HawkEye Ocean Color Imager. Study of ocean color assists the better understanding everything from plankton populations to the degradation of coral reefs to the effects of El Niño. The sun-synchronous orbit allows researchers to monitor day to day changes, imaging a swath of ocean 230 km wide down to a resolution of 120m wide.
“Landsat ocean color images traditionally cost about $1,000 each, and UNCW’s will be free to everybody.” said UNCW Center for Marine Science Professor John M. Morrison. “The data collected will improve our ability to monitor coastal environments where anthropogenic stresses like ‘red tides’ are often most acute
A team of North Idaho STEM Charter Academy students is about to land among the stars.
While the rest of the world is counting down to a new year, the Project DaVinci team is counting down to 8 p.m. Wednesday, when the cube satellite (CubeSat) the students have been working on for two years will launch into space on an electron rocket from a Rocket Lab ground station in New Zealand.
“It’s finally becoming reality,” project co-lead and ground communications lead Samantha Schroeder, a freshman, said during a team meeting at the school. “It’s very exciting.”
After years of planning, construction and testing, the UNITE CubeSAT, a small research satellite designed and built entirely by USI undergraduate students under the direction of Dr. Glenn Kissel, associate professor of engineering, was launched into space on Wednesday, December 5 aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. When it is launched from the ISS in 2019, it will be the first deployed satellite created by an Indiana higher education institution.
The satellite was designed and built by 18 engineering students, with support from five academics and consultants, in various engineering fields, from Jordanian universities.
The CPF [Crown Prince Foundation] said the Masar team will launch a mobile application that will enable users to track the Jordanian mini satellite and communicate with it.
