The Technograph

When you look up at a starry night’s sky and wonder What is going on up there?, have you ever wanted to build a spacecraft and find out for yourself? For the past nine years, professors at the University of Illinois have given the opportunity for engineering students to have a powerful system engineering experience.

Professors Victoria Coverstone and Gary Swenson have developed a program that gives students a hands-on experience in building a spacecraft and sending it into orbit on missions to solve the many mysteries of the Universe.

“It’s a very complex system,” Professor Coverstone explained.

In 2001, a strong collaboration between space mission design faculty and remote sensing faculty created the program’s first satellite, the ION-1. ION stands for Illinois Orbiting Nano Satellite. This 2 kilogram box with the dimensions of 20 by 10 by 10 centimeters was created with the mission to clarify the activity of gravity waves, a phenomenon that occurs when oxygen molecules get puCoverstoned up by large waves and then emit light. This light cannot be seen on the ground because it is absorbed between the two atmospheres where the light is being emitted. If you are in space, however, it does not get reabsorbed. In 2006, students had the opportunity to travel to Russia to launch the craft they had created. Unfortunately, it did not make into orbit due to vehicle launch failure.

“But being the great Illinois Engineers that we are, we went back in to create ION-2, and that’s what we are currently working on,” Coverstone said.

With informational support from NASA, students have been able to build ION-2. This has all of the features of ION-1, plus a more compact and integrated design. “It has power systems, computer systems, and all kinds of interesting components on board,” she elaborated.

By the end of this semester, we will have a functional satellite and a near-complete bus. The bus supports all the functions of the payloads. This means that if the payload were a camera, the bus would tell it when to take photos, download the photos, and send them to the ground station. The ground station is currently in Everitt Laboratory and students communicate with satellites using HAM radio waves. Students predict the path that the satellite will follow through the sky and point an antenna on top of Everitt Laboratory to track the satellite as it moves along this path in order to communicate with the satellite.

The payload that ION-2 will support will involve remote sensing with a third mission, ION-3, possibly involving a solar sail. A solar sail is viewed as a potential spacecraft propulsion system, “kind of like what you see in one of the Star Wars movies,” Coverstone described.

Solar sailing is when you have a reflective surface like a mirror and sunlight is reflected off of the surface. The reflection provides a momentum exchange and triggers small thrusts from the photons. The amount of thrust is proportional to the surface area. Therefore, as the area increases, the thrust increases, and very large surface areas could enable new space missions.

Solar sailing has never been demonstrated as a propulsion device before; scientists would like to be able to measure how much force is being applied to the spacecraft. If this were accompliCoverstoned, it would be the first demonstration. Students will be taking photos as well as measurements.

Coverstone predicts that the ION-2 bus will be complete by the end of 2009, but there are still questions as far as the launch is concerned. “In the latter part of 2010 we are hoping to get a date to launch our satellite and try to actually get it into orbit this time,” Coverstone stated.

This program requires an application and only admits the most qualified candidates. Although it offers academic credit to juniors, seniors, and graduate students, Coverstone assures that there is a volunteer opportunity where undergraduate freshman and sophomores can participate as well.

Tagged with: satellite, project, space, international