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Students to Build Satellite with NASA Grant
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Students at Michigan Tech are teaming up with Calumet High School students to build their own satellite, thanks to a $125,000 grant from NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
The students will construct a small satellite that could play a role in the ongoing effort to model the Earth’s climate. And even if the “nanosat” doesn’t get off the ground, the project can still be counted a success.
Michigan Tech is among 10 universities to receive grants under the University Nanosat Program, so named because the satellites will be pretty small, less than half a meter (about 20 inches) across and weighing under 50 pounds.
“They’ve given us support to do a high-risk, high-payoff demonstration of several untested technologies,” said Brad King, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics. “But our educational objective is really the key.”
Their project, named “Nanosatellite Technology Demonstrator for Earth Remote Sensing,” has as its goal inspiring students to pursue careers in space flight. Plus, it provides an extraordinary project for students in the Aerospace Enterprise*, for which King is the advisor.
WHAT THE NANOSAT WILL DO
“The only way to model climate is to figure out where the water is and where it’s going,” King says. “Climate is strongly influenced by the water cycle. It’s the most important process on Earth.”
But while scientists have been able to track the flow of water in the air and on the Earth’s surface, a small but significant reservoir remains unmeasured: the water contained in the first few feet of soil.
That’s changing. “A pioneering way to measure soil moisture is by looking at the microwave radiation it gives off,” King said. However, the frequencies are so low (between 1 and 3 GHz) that, in the past, a satellite needed an antenna at least 10 feet across to pick up the emissions. New wireless technologies now permit the development of a small, more-manageable antenna, but the industry may also have inadvertently made detection more difficult.
The problem is electronic pollution. With the massive growth in wireless communications, such as cell phones, the low-frequency bandwidth that was once the province of remote sensing could now be contaminated by manmade radiation.
Enter the Michigan Tech nanosat. It will be designed to measure variations in radio wave emissions that would show how much, if any, manmade radiation is seeping into the frequencies characteristic of soil moisture.
“The government says that nobody is supposed to emit radiation in this band, but it could inadvertantly spill into this region,” King said.
The data gathered by the MTU nanosat could then be used as part of the effort to collect good data on soil moisture and weave it into models that help us understand and predict the Earth’s climate.
WHAT IT WILL TAKE
The success of MTU’s nanosat program depends on the kindness of companies that are donating some very valuable technology.
Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation, of San Leandro, Calif., is providing the components to make microthrusters, used to keep the satellite up in orbit. “The rocket engines fit in the palm of your hand, and the thrust they generate is equal to the weight of about one a human hair,” King said. “But in the vacuum of space, that’s all you need.”
ILC Dover, of Frederica, Del., will develop and donate a balloon-like arm on which to mount the antenna. The “inflatable deployable antenna boom” will be stowed inside the satellite and then inflated once it reaches orbit. This new dumbbell shape will stabilize the nanosat, so that the antenna will always be pointing downward at the Earth’s surface.
In addition, Jeffrey Piepmeier of NASA’s Microwave Instrument Technology will design a radiometer to measure the microwave radiation.
The Aerospace Enterprise, with help from the Calumet High School students, is responsible for putting it all together.
“It’s this cooperation from industry and from NASA that really enables this project,” King said. “That, and the enthusiasm of the students. I sit back and try not to get in the way.”
THE STUDENTS
Jon Verville, a mechanical engineering senior and president of the Aerospace Enterprise, is a case in point.
“I’m very excited,” he says. “I’ve been working with other students to bring aerospace engineering to Michigan Tech since the summer of 2001.”
“This [nanosat program] pulls us into another realm; it exposes us to technologies we’ve never seen before.
“I’m sure there are grad students who haven’t had access to this caliber of technology.”
As for working with the Calumet High School students, Verville is optimistic.
“I’ve taught Summer Youth [MTU’s summer program for secondary students], and I know high schoolers are bright, and I know they’ll be able to help us.”
Casie Applin, vice president of the Aerospace Enterprise, is majoring in electrical engineering and is enrolled in Air Force ROTC. Once she graduates, she hopes to be a pilot and, if all goes well, an astronaut. “I’m really interested in space,” she said. Until the Enterprise started, there weren’t many opportunities to learn aerospace engineering at MTU. And she’s especially pleased to be involving a school such as Calumet High.
“I’m from the U.P., and most of the schools up here are small and don’t have this kind of opportunity,” she said. “I think it’s great.”
Plus, teaming up with high school students gave them an edge with NASA in the grant application process, King believes.
“The program requires outreach, and the way I decided to involve high school students was to have them participate in the project. I didn’t want to do something artificial like a classroom demonstration. The inspiration gained by actually building a spacecraft will surpass anything I could give them in a classroom."
Why Calumet High? They have a great engineering design program, along with state-of-the-art fabrication facilities for industrial arts, he says. Some of the nanosat parts will probably be designed and constructed there. And it's one of the top schools in the state, says King, who, as a member of CHS Class of '89, knows whereof he speaks.
Verville sees it as a chance to do good by doing well.
“NASA is reaching down to us, passing on cool opportunities,” he said. “And now we’re passing those opportunities down to the secondary level.” Plus, he says, the Aerospace Enterprise can use the help.
“There’s no reason the high school students won’t be doing important work. There will be a lot of it to do.”
Michigan Tech’s Enterprise Program brings together multidisciplinary teams of undergraduates to work on various projects. Their sponsors may be industry or other organizations, as in the case of the Aerospace Enterprise.
Nearly 400 students are participating in 17 different Enterprises. |
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