Little CubeSats Pay Off in Big Ways

Six 2018-2019 senior design teams made up predominately of aerospace and mechanical engineering majors created CubeSats, or mini satellites, to collect and transmit data from space.

CubeSats typically weigh less than 3 pounds and can be launched for about $40,000, as opposed to the millions of dollars traditional satellites cost.

One interdisciplinary team created a low-cost, space-qualified video camera for a project they called CatSat, which uses a novel inflatable antenna to send data back to Earth. NASA selected the CatSat to fly aboard a future space mission as part of its CubeSat Launch Initiative.

“We ruggedized it, space qualified it and got the cost down to $3,363,” said team member Joe Padish.

Another interdisciplinary team designed a commercial CubeSat to orbit Earth and capture, store and send back images of groups of stars.

Two aerospace teams worked on CubeSats for ice studies. One design contained a radar and camera for capturing data about glaciers from low-Earth polar orbit. It used four lightweight inflatable antennas tucked inside a simple deployment mechanism to send back the information. The other was a CubeSat infrastructure to support a radar instrument for imaging the size and depth of ice sheets on Earth.

“Scientists can use that info to combat problems like climate change,” said team member Alex McCarthy.

Lunar exploration was the focus of two CubeSat projects.

CubeSats aren’t normally designed to land, so one team used a nitinol shape memory alloy, which expands when exposed to solar radiation, to create landing gear tucked inside a simple deployment mechanism.

“It’s basically like a big jack-in-the-box,” said team member Bryan Patrick Schwartzman.

Another team designed an autonomous CubeSat capable of landing on the moon and collecting magnetic field data. It included a navigation system, camera, two solar panel arrays to convert sunlight into energy, four engines and two onboard computers.

“We really tried to challenge ourselves,” said team member Victor Emmanuel Padilla.