Flight Programs

First, a warm welcome to all new and returning members of SSPL to the Fall 2013 semester!

In Fall 2012, student members prepared a proposal for the "Orbital System for Investigating the Response of the Ionosphere to Stimulation and space weather" mission. This spring, the OSIRIS-3U mission was accepted for the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative.

OSIRIS-3U will take measurements of the stimulated ionosphere using a three unit (3U) CubeSat, measuring 10 x 10 x 30 cm. Ground-based heaters will modify the atmosphere in order to create artificial space weather events that will be studied by OSIRIS-3U. The mission provides research into radiowave-plasma interactions and plasma transport.

Expected launch is late 2015 into early 2016. As the semester gets under way, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved with the mission. Please stop by or contact a lead to see how you can get involved!

SSPL's proposal for the OSIRIS Lite 2 (O2) payload on HASP 2011 has been accepted!

HASP provides the opportunity for student payloads to fly at the edge of space to support science and technology development missions. The payload this year is a continuation of SSPL's OSIRIS CubeSat development program where the complete spacecraft bus will be demonstrated in the flight form factor.

The thermal team concluded a ~24 hour thermal vacuum test of OLite this morning. For the test, OLite was exposed to temperatures as low as -20 degrees C while operating as is expected during the HASP Balloon flight. Preliminary data shows that temperatures inside OLite got as low as -10 degrees C on the COMM FPGA while staying around 10 degrees C on the RF power amplifier. 

Congratulations to the entire OLite team for successfully surviving the simulated balloon flight.

The OLite 2 team had their first major design review yesterday when they presented their mission concept review to a review panel consisting of Dr. Sven Bilen (Associate Professor Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, PSU), Robert Capuro (Retiree, Honeywell Inc.), and Michael Paul (PSU Applied Research Laboratory). Many thanks to the review team for their questions and comments during the review. The team will be working to address these comments as they move forward designing through to the PDR, scheduled for the week before Thanksgiving.

Thank you reviewers and congratulations to the O2 Team.

The review material can be found here or by request to the O2 Project Manager Allen Kummer, atk5025@psu.edu

The Comm and Ground Station teams completed a rangetestyesterday, stretching about .8 miles along Curtin Road. They expect that the range was limited dueto obstructions like trees and cars along the line of sight. Further testing using attenuators is planned to simulate pass loss.

While the ground station was being tested on the roof, the flight communications team, responsible for designing, building and testing the flight radio, was busy with their own test in the lab. The team was able to demonstrate today bench top communications from the flight radio to the mobile ground station paving the way for some field range testing and integration with the OLite system over the course of the next month.

Josh Miller demonstrated today the ground station's ability to receive voice information from a satellite. At approximately 3:20 today the Saudisat 1C relay satellite passed over State College and the ground station was able to listen in on a conversation between two amateur radio operators. This is the first step being taken towards the goal of a working satellite ground station capable of supporting the OSIRIS CubeSat. Satellite relay contacts like this will be used to test the ground station's tracking algorithms as well as radio functionality in the coming months. 

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

---

Here is a clip of the lastest progress with CanSat.

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!