Introduction

With an emphasis on education and research, NASA now has the capability to fly Cube Satellites (CubeSats) as secondary payloads on the government’s current Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) fleet. CubeSats are small satellites with the dimensions of 10x10x10cm per unit (U). These satellites are capable of providing low-cost access to space and hence enable government, industry, and educational institutions an opportunity to engage in cost-effective science missions, technology maturation, and industry workforce development. One incredible education return from this lower cost is the ability for high-schools and universities to develop these CubeSats under normal research and education grants. Creating a project for students to either become interested in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) fields or do work that will be directly applicable to that of industry.

Currently, there are a few different deployment systems that are used to contains and deploy the CubeSats once they are in a desired orbit. Containing the secondary payloads in one of these deployers creates a scenario in which there is minimal risk to the primary payload from any of the CubeSats inside. The CubeSat deployer that attaches to the ELV has different mounting locations and interfaces for each launch vehicle, which makes it hard to characterize the environment during launch. However, as more launches are provided by NASA, and CubeSat technology gets more advanced, there becomes a need to characterize the launch environment that is seen by these CubeSats on each vehicle and in each type of deployer. Defining this environment will not only help CubeSat developers in bringing down overdesign costs but will also decrease risk as seen by the launch providers and the vehicles primary payload.

Team Members


Adam Gunderson - Electrical Engineer
Laurie Smoot - Electrical Engineer
CJ Hadwin - Electrical Engineer
Mike Hansen - Electrical Engineer

Advisors


Dr. Robert Gunderson
Dr. David Dickensheets
Ehson Mosleh (Customer Contact)