College students on the College of Arizona have constructed a cubesat to show what they hope would be the reply to high-speed, low-cost space communication and information transmission for small satellites.
The 2-toned antenna, serving credence to the communication machine’s seaside ball comparability, will launch in a stowed and folded configuration. As soon as in Earth orbit, the antenna will inflate utilizing a mixture of helium and argon, rising its preliminary floor space to supply elevated downlink speeds.
The cubesat — “CatSat,” as the scholars have dubbed it — will serve a twin function alongside its novel antenna check. Devices reverse the seaside ball antenna will probe Earth’s ionosphere to review the propagation and modifications of high-frequency radio indicators above the ambiance. Along with different onboard elements, CatSat’s devices will ship down high-resolution photos of our planet at speeds beforehand unobtainable by comparably sized cubesats.
Associated: Cubesats: Tiny payloads, huge benefits for space research
Hilliard Paige, College of Arizona techniques engineering scholar and CatSat’s lead system engineer, sees the antenna idea as a pathfinder for future missions. “Following a profitable launch, this inflatable antenna would be the first of its form in space,” she stated in an online post (opens in new tab) from the college.
“The expertise demonstrated by CatSat opens the door to the potential of future lunar, planetary and deep-space missions utilizing cubesats,” echoed College of Arizona professor of astronomy Chris Walker.
By the College of Arizona’s commercialization efforts through Tech Launch Arizona, Walker co-founded an organization known as Freefall Aerospace, which developed the seaside ball antenna. Walker was additionally one of many College of Arizona school to submit the preliminary CatSat proposal to NASA underneath the company’s Cubesat Launch Initiative in 2019.
That proposal gained NASA’s approval, and CatSat was assigned a launch automobile — a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket, which is able to raise off from Vandenberg House Drive Base in California and ship the small satellite to a 340-mile-high (547 kilometers), sun-synchronous orbit. If profitable, CatSat’s seaside ball antenna will then beam down close to real-time photos of Earth.
CatSat doesn’t but have a goal launch date, although it is anticipated to get one later this yr, College of Arizona officers stated.
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