Category Archives: Amateur/Student Satellite

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Satellite Watching

Russian student satellite will shine bright in the night sky

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A Russian student satellite was recently launched (along with 72 other satellites) into low earth orbit (LEO). Mayak is Russia’s first crowdfunded satellite project. The primary goal is to demonstrate that a small satellite can be de-orbited passively by deploying a large form that greatly increases the drag of the spacecraft as it passes through the extremely thin upper atmosphere in LEO.

Mayak, which is about the size of a loaf of bread (10cm x 10cm x 34 cm),  will inflate a tetrahedron-shaped form covered in reflective sheets. This will not only increase its drag but will also make it very bright in the night sky: Almost as Bright as the Moon? New Satellite Might Light Up the Sky – Sky & Telescope.

Each surface is four square meters on a side and should be readily visible from the ground on a twilight pass. In fact, the team claims, Mayak will be the “brightest shooting star” once unfurled, almost as bright as the full Moon at magnitude –10. Mayak could be visible in bright twilight and perhaps even during daytime passes as well.

The satellite tracking website Heavens-Above has created a Mayak tracking tool that will tell you when Mayak will pass over your location.

The plan is to fly Mayak in a stabilized mode for the first four weeks, then set it tumbling on all three axes, setting off a brilliant twinkling pattern. The team’s site mentions using brightness estimations from Mayak to gather information about air density at high altitude and to calibrate brightness estimations for future satellites.

The reflector will also speed up reentry once deployed, utilizing both solar wind pressure and atmospheric drag. Such devices may become a standard feature on future satellites, enabling them to de-orbit shortly after their mission ends rather than adding to the growing tally of space junk in low-Earth orbit. Nanosail-D2 tested a similar technology in 2011, and another mission recently dispatched from the International Space Station, InflateSail, is currently testing the same method.

The University of Toronto’s CanX-7  satellite, launched last September, deployed a drag sail in May and it quickly demonstrated its de-orbiting effect.

Here is a video of the launch of the Soyuz rocket that  put the 73 satellites into orbit:

 

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Amateur/Student Satellite, Software, Space Systems

Video: TMRO Orbit 10.23 – “KubOS, An Operating System for CubeSats”

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Here is the latest TMRO.tv show: KubOS, An Operating System for CubeSats – Orbit 10.23 – TMRO

Marshall Culpepper the CEO & Co-founder of KubOS joins us to talk about their operating system for CubeSats and how they are helping to spur the growth of the CubeSat market.

In Space News:

NICER is deployed on the International Space Station
Tianzhou-1 conducts undocking and redocking at Tiangong-2
Updated Kepler catalog yields 219 more planets
14 Year Old Satellite is out of control
ESA selects LISA for gravity wave observatory in space

TMRO is viewer supported:

TMRO:Space is a crowd funded show. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over to http://www.patreon.com/tmro for information, goals and reward levels.

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Science, Space Systems

Satellites launched into orbit from the ISS, includes QB50 Mission student CubeSats

This week over a dozen small satellites called CubeSats have been injected into orbit from the International Space Station using a system developed by NanoRacks. This video of the deployment of a NASA satellite on Tuesday:

A description of the satellites being sent into orbit is given in CubeSat Deployer Mission 11 Status Update: Good Deploy! – NanoRacks.

A cubesat is shot into orbit from the ISS; Credits NanoRacks.

The deployments included satellites from the QB50 Mission

The QB50 Mission consists of dozens of universities located around the world – including Israel, Canada, Australia, Korea, Spain, Germany, France and more. Coordinated by the von Karman Institute and sponsored by the European Commission, the QB50 CubeSats will take advantage of the space station orbit to study the lower thermosphere (200-380 kilometers) collecting scientific climate data, in what is considered by experts a relatively unexplored part of Earth’s atmosphere.

The ISS portion of the QB50 Mission involves over 300 students and 50 professionals, which brings the program together.

Astronaut Thomas Pesquet tells us about the QB50 Mission being deployed via NanoRacks and our NRCSD (NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer) on the International Space Station.

 

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space participation

Cubes in Space: Sending middle/high school student experiments to space

The Cubes in Space is a program to provide opportunities for students age 11 to 18 to design and build experiments that will be launched into space and near-space:

Cubes in Space™ is the only program in the world to provide students (ages 11-18) with a free opportunity to design experiments to be launched into space on a NASA rocket or balloon!

This is a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) based global education program, enabling kids to learn about space exploration utilizing innovative problem-solving inquiry-based learning methods. By participating in this program, students and educators are provided with engaging content and activities in preparation for the design and development of an experiment to be integrated into a small cube.

This year, successful experiments/cubes will be launched into space via sounding rocket from NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia in late June 2017 or on a high altitude balloon launched from the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico in August 2017.

Since we first began the Cubes in Space program in 2014, we have had over 5000 participants from 37 countries, and counting! Come and join us!

The program is sponsored by education organization idoodlelearning in partnership with NASA.

idoodlelearning is proud to partner with the Colorado Space Grant Consortium with support from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and Sounding Rocket Program Offices to bring Cubes in Space™ to this new generation of future inventors, scientists, engineers, artists and innovators.

idoodlelearning is excited to be working with NASA’s Balloon Program Office, to bring high altitude balloon opportunities to students around the world.

Here is the schedule for the next round of student experiments: Cubes In Space Overview.

2016-cis-launch
2016 Cubes in Space launch of sounding rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia.
Amateur/Student Satellite, Space participation, Space Systems

Video: The story of the $50SAT Eagle2 pocketqube

Here is another video from the Electromagnetic Field event held in Guildford, UK earlier this summer (see previous posts A hacker’s guide to satellites and … An Intro to Rockets). Stuart Robinson tells the story of the $50Sat Eagle2 satellite that was launched to orbit in 2013:

More info about the project:

The PocketQube Shop sells components for the PocketQube satellite standard.

See also the HobbySpace Satellite Building  section on student and amateur satellites.

Here is a video of the launch of the Russian Dnepr rocket, a converted ICBM, on which the $50Sat got a free ride:

 

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