What better time to announce than Star Wars Day that NASA has slated Michigan Technological University’s second student-built satellite for a March 2021 deployment from the International Space Station (ISS).
Stratus, a CubeSat named for its cloud-imaging mission, will be carried to the space station, 200 miles above Earth, in a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket, where it will be unloaded, moved into position and deployed into space to gather cloud data that can validate and improve numerical weather models.
Aerospace Enterprise Team Project Manager Troy Maust, a fourth-year computer engineering major, has been working on the project for about a year. “This mission has been in the works for much longer,” he said. “As with Oculus, I estimate more than 200 students and alumni have been part of this mission; it wouldn’t be possible without them.”
The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected university access around the world, and Michigan Tech is no exception. Maust said system level testing will take place as soon as campus re-opens. “Vibration and thermal vacuum testing will also be performed to ensure the spacecraft can withstand the harsh conditions of launch and space,” he said. “All of this will keep us busy until our December 2020 handover date.”
Once successfully deployed, Stratus will be the University’s second orbiting nanosatellite. The first, Oculus-ASR, was launched from Cape Canaveral in June 2019. Another satellite, Auris, designed to monitor communications emissions from geostationary satellites, has cleared system concept review in the design and development phase of the Air Force Research Lab University Nanosatellite Program.
Long-time Aerospace Team Advisor Dr. Brad King, MTU’s Henes (heh-nis) Professor of Space Systems, said “winning the NASA launch was great news, but our celebration was short. Suddenly our ’to-do’ list has gotten a lot longer and the stakes have gotten a lot higher. I know these students can handle whatever challenges lie waiting between here and orbit. Like it was with Oculus, we will have our big celebration when we see the rocket heading skyward.”
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