News

Last weekend the solar cell array for the OSIRIS CubeSat was built. Here are some images of Allen and Matt in the lab.

---

The Cansat 2010 competition is underway once again.  This year, our team is tasked with designing a system capable of delivering a very sensitive payload to a specific GPS coordinate.  Their design consists of a collapsible glider that will fit into the rocket.  The glider will have a steerable rudder that will guide it to its assigned location. Best of luck to our 2010 Cansat team!

Pictures of their design are attached below, enjoy!

Insider exclusive on what a day is like at the Student Space Programs Lab at PennState. Click me!

SSPL Students and Faculty recently assisted in a Pennsylvania Space Grant sponsored program to assist middle school teachers with curriculum. As part of the program students Corey Friedenberger (Junior, Aerospace) and Paul Pribula (Senior, Physics) working with Professor Sven Bilen, assisted in the launch of teacher developing water bottle and air powered rockets. As part of the program, teachers were testing various rocket designs and propulsion ratios to take this activity back to the classroom.

Read more at: http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/story/1415617.html

 

This past week, students from the OSIRIS team completed a design review with our mentors at Aerospace Corp. The students presented their work leading up to an NSF sponsored CubeSat solicitation to gather some useful input into industry practices and how they could help produce a winning proposal.

For more information on Aerospace Corp please visit: www.aero.org

The following article was taken from Annales Geophysicae:

Abstract. The dust detector on the ESPRIT rocket detected two extended dust/aerosol layers during the launch on 1 July 2006. The lower layer at height ~81.5–83 km coincided with a strong NLC and PMSE layer. The maximum dust charge density was ~−3.5×10⁹ e m⁻³ and the dust layer was characterized by a few strong dust layers where the dust charge density at the upper edges changed by factors 2–3 over a distance of ≲10 m, while the same change at their lower edges were much more gradual. The upper edge of this layer is also sharp, with a change in the probe current from zero to I_DC=−10⁻¹¹ A over ~10 m, while the same change at the low edge occurs over ~500 m. The second dust layer at ~85–92 km was in the height range of a comparatively weak PMSE layer and the maximum dust charge density was ~−10⁸ e m⁻³. This demonstrates that PMSE can be formed even if the ratio of the dust charge density to the electron density P=N_dZ_d /n_e≲0.01. 

In spite of the dust detector being constructed to reduce possible secondary charging effects from dust impacts, it was found that they were clearly present during the passage through both layers. The measured secondary charging effects confirm recent results that dust in the NLC and PMSE layers can be very effective in producing secondary charges with up to ~50 to 100 electron charges being rubbed off by one impacting large dust particle, if the impact angle is θ_i≳20–35°. This again lends support to the suggested model for NLC and PMSE dust particles (Havnes and Næsheim, 2007) as a loosely bound water-ice clump interspersed with a considerable number of sub-nanometer-sized meteoric smoke particles, possibly also contaminated with meteoric atomic species.


Full Article(PDF, 955 KB)

Other Links:
Professor Sven G. Bilén
Center for Space Research Programs

Tony Tao, a Junior in Aerospace Engineering and project manager for the OSIRIS CubeSat project, spent the summer of 2008 working for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory through the Space Grant program. His work was centered around the mission and data system design for the HyspIRI (Hyperspectral InfraRed Imager) satellite, planned for launch in 2015.

HyspIRI will collect hyperspectral images from the visible-shortwave to mid-infrared parts of the EM spectrum, which will aid scientists in studying global climate and ecological health. This data is extremely large in volume due to its nature (on the order of hundreds of gigabytes per day), and it was the mission of the HyspIRI intern team to design the mission and data systems to handle the scientific data collected by the satellite.

In recognition of the team's work, JPL has published an article and interview video: [link]

The flight of the HASP (High Altitude Student Platform) balloon carrying SSPL's HEMI (High Energy Monitoring Instrument) has concluded successfully. This flight brings HEMI one step closer in the development of the instrument for flight on the proposed NASA spacecraft, JANUS. Congratulations to everyone involved.

EDIT 9/17/08: This flight has ended and the video link is no longer valid.

LIVE:

SSPL’s prototype of the HEMI instrument launched from Ft. Sumner on a high altitude balloon this morning.

A live webcast is being broadcast at: http://laspace.lsu.edu/HASP/video/cosmocam.html

The flight will last approximately 20 hours; Quick-look science data should be available shortly after the flight.

Congratulations to the HEMI team!

Kenneth Getzandanner, Junior Aerospace Engineering and member of the NittanySat GNC team was awarded the Engineering Co-Op Student of the Year Award today for his work at Honeywell Technology Solutions modeling satellites orbiting the Earth, Moon and Mars.

Congratulations for your achievements at Honeywell, Ken!

A big congratulations to Jessica Tramaglini on her acceptance into the NASA Academy, a highly competitive internship which "gives students the critical exposure needed to work within the aerospace industry. " [link]

The Penn State Flyin Lions microgravity team returned to Ellington Field in Houston, Texas for NASA’s Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. The team proposed a reflight of their dusty plasma experiment from last year in October, and was selected. This year’s team consists of veteran flyers Chad Gerdish (B.S. ’08) and Jessica Tramaglini (senior) of Aerospace Engineering, veteran program participants Jaci Croce (B.S. ’08) of Civil Engineering and Val O’Donnell (junior) of Electrical Engineering, and Laura Essinger-Hileman (junior) of Secondary Education. Flight week’s events consisted of physiological training, hypoxia (lack of oxygen) training in the hyperbaric chamber in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL), preparing the experiment, and participating in a test readiness review before being allowed to fly. The second flight day’s experiment proved successful, after improvements from the first flight day. After flight days the Flyin’ Lions partook in a tour of Johnson Space Center. The team is currently beginning data analysis and the final report due to NASA. In addition to the technical experiment, the team also conducted outreach. In addition to participating in the College of Engineering open house and Exploration Day, the Flyin’ Lions have been working with Penns Valley Middle School students. Together the students came up with several ideas for minor microgravity experiments. Per their ideas, the team brought up a snow globe, bubble gun, and battery-operated car with fins the students fabricated, to study the effects of microgravity on these objects. Much work still lies ahead, with data analysis, a final report due to NASA, and final meeting with the middle school students still to be accomplished. The team has already learned so many beneficial lessons from the program, and seeks to ensure that the Penn State Flyin Lions remain in the skies.

Students Perry Edwards, Adam Escobar, and Andrea Wyant attended the 12th international Ionospheric Effects Symposium (IES) to present NittanySat’s mission to characterize and better understand the D-region ionosphere's effects on radiowave propagation. According to IES, the purpose of the conference is to "bridge the gap between applications and research involving ionospheric & space weather disciplines."

Discussion with Prof. Bob Schunk, author of several ionospheric books.

Students with Prof. Bodo Reinisch, Head of Environmental, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences Department at University of Massachusetts Lowell and developer of the first digital ionosonde.

Students with Dr. David Anderson, NOAA -- he is well known in ionospheric modeling and calculations of ionospheric response to geomagnetic effects.

Every semester, the Penn State Learning Factory (machine shop) showcases projects completed by students in the College of Engineering. This year, Nate Morgan, Ed Brouwers (below left), and Jason Miller presented SSPL's Next Generation [Sounding Rocket] Boom project while Matt Sunderland (below right) presented the NittanySat Sensor Board.

Seven students from the team developing the High Energy Monitoring Instrument (HEMI) to detect gamma ray bursts (GRBs) travelled to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Facility to discuss GRB science with Dr. Neil Gehrels, a leading expert in GRB science and instrumentation. While at Goddard, the students were also able to tour the facilities.

Students meeting will Dr. Gehrels

Touring one of Goddard's balloon payloads in development - an X-Ray telescope.

Hardware being assembled and tested in the world's second largest clean room for the upcoming Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.

Students in front of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (expected to launch late fall 2008)