 Mini-Satellites Link Students With Future
It's hard to picture such diminutive objects in the cold and uncaring environment of outer space.
But later this year, four-inch cubes like the one sitting on Dave
Klumpar's desk will ride a Russian rocket into orbit and get
kicked into space.
There, the cube satellites, called CubeSats, will function like
real spacecraft by collecting data for days, weeks, or even
months.
"I would consider a lifetime of a few months to be a major
success," said Klumpar, a research professor of physics at
Montana State University-Bozeman.
Klumpar is in charge of MSU's new Space Science and Engineering
Laboratory, where students have begun working on an MSU CubeSat
they plan to have ready for launch in November 2001. Weighing
just over two pounds, the miniature satellite must have its own
power supply and a two-way communications system. It will have to
orient itself properly in space and maintain the correct
temperature. And, ideally, it will collect meaningful information
about the Earth's space environment.
In fact, Klumpar envisions a network of MSU CubeSats in space one
day taking measurements of the northern lights (aurora borealis),
for example. Other universities have talked about sending a
flotilla of CubeSats to Mars.
"It's like a little robot in a four-inch cube that can go out
into the hazardous environment of space and survive for a few
months," said Klumpar.
"If it can return a beep, that's great," said MSU research
professor of physics and one-time astronaut Loren Acton.
It was Acton's idea to create a lab for students to get hands-on
experience designing and building inexpensive space hardware.
With the current generation of space engineers nearing
retirement, there's going to be a real need for students with
technical, presentation, teamwork and problem solving skills, he
said.
"We are virtually in a crisis stage in handing on the baton on
space technology at a time when our space involvement is actually
growing," Klumpar agreed."There's an entire space industry that's
crying for space engineers."
The lab's budget--estimated at about $3 million a year--will be
covered by grant dollars. The lab has initial funding from the
Montana Space Grant Consortium and NASA EPSCoR.
"(The lab) will broaden our students' skills in just the
directions desired by industry and national laboratories," said
physics department head John Hermanson.
Similar space science labs exist in a few of the more populous
western states, such as Utah, Colorado, and California, but not
elsewhere in Montana or in nearby states, he said.
With the launch date less than a year away, the students will
have to hustle to have their satellite ready in time. Several
universities and independent teams, including a ham radio group
in Washington, D.C., are already building their mini satellites.
A private launch provider in Ogden, Utah, will bundle about 15
CubeSats, including MSU's, into launch tubes once a year and
deliver them to a launch site in Kazakhstan. The tubes will get
bolted on as a secondary payload to a larger mission, which pays
most of the launch cost. Once in space, the tubes will open and a
spring will kick the cubes into space at the right time.
"The cost to us is $30,000," said Klumpar, a fraction of normal
launch costs that range between $100,000 and $150,000 a kilogram.
So if MSU's spacecraft doesn't beep from space, the loss is
minimal, Klumpar said.
"But you really don't even lose that, because the students
learned throughout the process," he said. "They met 95 percent of
the objectives just getting to that point."
The lab is open to all undergraduate and graduate students,
Klumpar said, but he expects physics, computer science, and
electrical and mechanical engineering majors to be especially
interested. So far, four students are working on the first
CubeSat in the university's Engineering/Physical Sciences
Building.
"The desire to learn and the will to accomplish something far
outstrips capability or experience," Klumpar said. "If a person
has never seen a satellite and has never touched a soldering
iron, in a day we can teach them to solder. If the student wants
to learn, that's the biggest prerequisite."
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