Students team up to build nanosatellite
A group of mechanical engineering students at Utah State University are building a nanosatellite as part of a competition with 13 other schools.
Joel Quincieu, a master’s student in mechanical engineering and the team’s project manager, said they have two years to design and build a nanosatellite. The one who wins gets a free launch into space.
The competition formally began in February 2003 with design plans, said Pranay Gupta, a graduate student in electrical engineering. He said that USU did well in the preliminary design reviews held on Aug. 15.
“Right now, we are one of the most promising teams of the Air Force, and we have no reason to believe why we cannot win the competition,” Gupta said.
This is the third time the competition has been held and is sponsored by Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Air Force Research Laboratory-Space Vehicles Directorate. This is USU’s second year competing and its satellite is named USU Sat II.
This project affects the scientific community because they are learning more about satellite design, Quincieu said. One purpose of the project is to find ways to easily manufacture a simple, cheap satellite that can perform very well, he said.
The organizations also kept their future employees in mind when creating the competitions.
“[They] joined together to educate new students, to train them about the space industry,” Gupta said.
The mission of USU Sat II is to gather data about plasma in the ionosphere, said Quincieu. The nanosatellite will be flying 380 km above sea level to accomplish its task.
He said the ionosphere is like “a soup of ions you’re flying through.”
The teams from the various universities are trying to prove that it is possible to build a nanosatellite in a short amount of time, with limited funds, that will also be easily reproducible.
The nanosatellite is named because it is the size of a 19-inch television set, when most satellites in space are the size of small cars, said Quincieu.
The group of undergraduate, graduate and doctorate students working on the project are all volunteers, Gupta said.
“It’s like having a class without having to pay fees,” Gupta said.
Quincieu said that one of the biggest benefits of this project is the real world experience.
“It’s like going from playing with Legos to building a car,” he said.
The biggest challenge of the project is the safety issues, Quincieu said. Building something that is safe that doesn’t impact the crew or the shuttle mission is very important, and there are always safety inspections to pass, Quincieu said.
If USU wins the competition, a ground station will most likely be set up on campus.
USU Sat II can be seen in more detail at the team’s Web site www.ususat2.org.
-gmk@cc.usu.edu