In a giant leap for Virginia Tech, the first satellite built by undergraduate students is scheduled to be launched into space on April 17.
One small step closer to reaching space, a group of Virginia Tech undergraduate students recently delivered their small satellite to Houston to be incorporated into NanoRacks’ commercially developed CubeSat deployer. Virginia Tech’s satellite, along with two satellites from other Virginia universities, is scheduled to launch on the payload section of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket and then will be headed to the International Space Station.
Over the last several years, an interdisciplinary team of 50 undergraduate students from the College of Engineering and the College of Science developed Virginia Tech’s CubeSat at the Center for Space Science and Engineering Research, known as (Space@VT). The project has provided students from aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, computer science, and physics with crucial hands-on mission experience in both spacecraft design and manufacturing, all working together to make the mission a reality.
The initiative began in June 2016 as part of the Virginia CubeSat Constellation, a collaborative effort between the Virginia Space Grant Consortium and four of its member universities: Virginia Tech, Old Dominion University, University of Virginia, and Hampton University. The project’s mission is to obtain measurements of the properties of the Earth’s atmosphere in low earth orbit. As the orbits of the satellites decay due to atmospheric drag, the satellite instruments will quantify atmospheric density.
Cube shaped nano-satellites, commonly known as CubeSats, are each about 4 inches long and weigh approximately 3 pounds. Small in size, they are packed with a motherboard, a global positioning system unit, radio, solar panels, and a power system.
One unique feature on Virginia Tech’s CubeSat was a side panel created out of a 3D printed material. The team incorporated temperature gauges into the satellite to test how the material will hold up in space.
“Designing and manufacturing instrumentation for operation in space is extremely challenging,” said Kevin Shinpaugh, the team’s faculty advisor. “It requires a lot of precision and you need to be particularly careful with construction and electronic wiring. If there is an issue once the satellite is deployed, you can’t go up there to make a quick fix.”
The undergraduates worked on sub-teams that included structures, software, thermal, and power.
Shinpaugh explained that the students completed rigorous testing and careful debugging prior to delivery of the CubeSat to Houston. Shinpaugh, also a professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering and director of information technology and computing services for the Biocomplexity Institute, and 10 of the Virginia Tech students plan to be in attendance when their satellite is launched from the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island.
All three of the university-built CubeSats will be deployed simultaneously into orbit by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, where they will function as a constellation. Old Dominion University’s satellite, which has a drag brake to intentionally cause orbital decay, is expected to remain in orbit for up to four months. The satellites from Virginia Tech and University of Virginia should orbit for up to two years. Several days after they are deployed into orbit, the satellites will begin communicating data to ground stations at Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and Old Dominion University for analysis, using an analytical tool that is being developed by the Hampton University students.
Using the orbital decay measurements and data, researchers will have a better, more accurate modeling of atmospheric conditions in low orbit and be able to increase usage of satellites in that layer. At Space@VT, the data will provide additional opportunities for students to gain experience in networking, cloud computing, and network storage.
Current team lead Madison Brodnax, a senior majoring in computer engineering, has been involved since the project began and is thrilled that the final stage is in sight.
“I’m super excited to see this come full circle, all the way from development to the launch,” said Brodnax. “We’ve all been working so hard, and there have been many late nights and staying in the lab on weekends. There were some challenges, as we built our motherboard from scratch. At one point we were ready and the motherboard went down. We all just came together and worked that much harder because everyone really wanted to see it completed.”
Over the course of the project, the team was coached by NASA, faculty in the aerospace and ocean engineering department, Space@VT, the Hume Center for National Security and Technology, and industry advisors.
