Photo by Jama Green for Virginia Tech.
A team of Virginia Tech researchers and students is preparing to deliver a 3U CubeSat for space-launch-qualification testing.
The satellite, once cleared for flight, is scheduled to launch on Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus NG-19 spacecraft from Wallops Island later this year.
The flight – designed, built and operated by students – represents the next generation of the ThickSat launched in February 2021, incorporating lessons learned and upgrading specific deployable structures and materials technologies.
Dubbed the Ut ProSat-1, the mission provides both undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to design, fabricate, assemble and validate a 3U satellite that will serve as a testbed for NASA Langley Research Center’s ultra-lightweight deployable boom technology, university officials said.
Throughout the deployment, the students will communicate and operate the mission through Virginia Tech’s ground station, execute a number of autonomous/remote deployments of the boom, and recover inertial measurement units and collect data from in-space deployment.
The mission is made possible through a partnership between NASA Langley Research Center, the Virginia Institute for Spaceflight and Autonomy, and the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.
Two slots were secured on the Cygnus NG-19 spacecraft, reserved for educational payloads from Virginia Tech and Old Dominion University. The student-built 3U units will test NASA’s carbon-fiber technology in different capacities.
The Virginia Tech project “is unique in its inclusion of copper traces down the entire length, making it possible to power, control and receive data from a sensor at the boom tip,” said Jonathan Black, a professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering.
“Data obtained from a variety of experiments will guide the design of future larger-scale composite solar sail systems,” Black said, “to be used for space-weather early-warning satellites, near-Earth asteroid-reconnaissance missions, or communications relays for crewed exploration missions.”
