The Colorado Space Grant News

Transcription

1 The Colorado Space Grant News Volume 2, Issue 2 September 2002 CX Sun Bath into the sun for the long hours of testing. The spacecraft was completely covered in plastic, clear enough to allow sunlight to reach the panels, secured in a frame, and then carried outside. One of the main goals of the solar panel testing was to ascertain the efficiency of the Peak Power Tracker (PPT). The PPT works with the solar arrays to regulate power that runs the spacecraft. Testing continued for two days, greeting the sun at 7:00 A.M. and continuing for CX team members Mike Siebert, Anthony Lowrey, and Eric Cain prepare the spacecraft for testing. CX This summer the Citizen Explorer team Project completed many important tests on Managers, Katie various systems. One of them was an Dunn and outside test of the solar arrays. Scott Miller, For the first time in CX history, the solar panels were tested while they monitor were on the spacecraft. The CX team progress faced the challenge of moving the of tests. spacecraft out of the cleanroom and 5 6 hours. The CX team was happy to discover 85% efficiency from the PPT. The spacecraft was able to function using power from the solar arrays; however, it was found that several of sensors were not performing correctly. Another test is planned for the end of September! USC is Lookin Good! Pueblo s new telescope a Celestron C22. The University of Southern Colorado (USC) has purchased a 22-inch telescope. The telescope will be located in an observatory that is under construction at the Greenway and Nature Center in Pueblo, Colorado. Although the new observatory will house the telescope, it will be controlled from the USC campus through an electronic linkage. The observatory will serve as an important resource for the students and faculty of the University of Southern Colorado, as well as for schools throughout southern Colorado, and the general public. 1 The observatory site and the beginnings of what will eventually be a 16.5 foot dome.

2 2002 continues to be a successful year for Space Grant. The number of students and citizens Director Elaine Hansen reached by the Colorado Space Grant program continues to grow. Undergraduate students involved in the development of spacecraft and payloads continue to grow and excel. The courses offered by Space Grant are now offered in multiple colleges within the University. We are oh so close to moving into our wonderful, new space in the new Discovery Learning Center. It is clear that collectively we are making an important difference in increasing the workforce in science and technology. The highlight of the summer was a three-day Starting Student Space Hardware Program Workshop for over 65 faculty and staff members from 34 states. Thanks to Space Grant members from Iowa, Montana, California, Arizona and Colorado, the workshop was a great success. The Director s Corner primary purpose of the workshop to show the well-informed, but uninitiated, how to put together in their own states an entire program for students to design, build, fly, and analyze a space system was clearly achieved The CSGC was well represented at the Small Satellite Conference in August at Utah State University. Four undergraduate students (Jen Michels, Jessica Pipis, Scott Miller, and Stephan Esterhuizen) developed and hosted a booth displaying CSGC programs, spacecraft hardware, and working payloads. By the end of the conference, these students were all heavily recruited, many new industry supporters were identified, and some suitable launch opportunities were defined. Additionally, Chris Koehler presented a conference paper on BalloonSats which was very well received. Several project design reviews were held over the summer. Each review was developed and presented by CSGC undergraduate students and critiqued by University faculty and industry advisors. Reviews included one for the Slow Down Mechanism for the 3CS stack, the Flight Readiness Review for the Citizen Explorer Satellite, and a Preliminary Design Review for 3CS and CX ground software. The new Discovery Learning Center (DLC) is nearing completion! We hope to move into our new home in September, ready for the formal dedication in October. Our new facilities will be first class, with separate labs for spacecraft design, assembly, and science analysis. Facilities include a new 100,000 class clean room, a modern Mission Control Center, as well as offices for Space Grant staff and students. We will also have an observatory dome with a working telescope on the roof along with our large tracking antenna for communications with orbiting satellites. Best yet, we will be on the top floor with plenty of windows! Thanks to all of you for your continuing interest and your much appreciated support. You are making this program a success! Consortium-wide Research, Teaching and Outreach Western State College, Gunnison. Recent Space Grant activities at Western State College (WSC) have primarily involved outreach and student research. International Astronomy Day was celebrated with public viewing sessions of the Sun as well as the night sky. Participants took advantage of the opportunity to view sunspots and solar prominences through an H-alpha filter. Jamie Woelk, an outstanding eighth grade science student at Gunnison Middle School, received recognition sponsored by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. Her name was inscribed on a plaque displayed at the school. She also received a personal plaque acknowledging her accomplishments. This is the third year that the CSGC has sponsored this award. Alan Piquette, a senior physics/ chemistry major, became involved with the Radio Jove Program. The goal of that program is to monitor 20.1 MHz signals from Jupiter and the Sun on a global basis and submit results to a central clearing house. Alan constructed and tested a receiver and antenna system. Alan presented a report on the status of the project at the Student Symposium in Boulder, and it is planned Alan and two of his colleagues conduct tests on the WSC campus. that other students will continue with a program of observation and analysis. Space Foundation, Colorado Springs 250 K-12 educators from across the country attended one or more of this summer s five unique Space Discovery courses, designed to teach teachers how to teach space in their classroom. The interactive curriculum included experiments on Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods; experiencing a flight simulator and spatial disorientation trainer - both used to train pilots and astronauts; and a GPS (Global Positioning System) exercise. The Space Foundation has conducted Space Discovery graduate courses since 1986, training more than 17,000 educators. Next summer s Space Discovery courses will have new content and be 2

3 Brig. Gen. Sampson gets ready to take Denver teacher Esperanza Bosworth for a spin in the disorientation trainer even more exciting and informative, commented Dr. Patricia Arnold, Space Foundation Vice President of Education. Six different weeklong courses will be offered next summer including Space History and Space Law, Earth Systems, Rocketry and the Biology of Living in Space, Biological and Physical Research, Astronomy, and Space Technologies. Space Discovery course participants can earn credit towards a Master s Degree with a Space Studies Emphasis, a recent collaboration between the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the Space Foundation. Information on the Master s program can be found at Rocketry class participants at the Space Foundation watch a launched rocket ascend to the clouds. Fort Lewis College, Durango Danny Jaques, a middle school teacher from Ignacio, Colorado, is known as the "Chief Space Cadet" to his students and the surrounding community. Every two years, Mr. Jaques leads an intrepid group of middle school students for a five-day adventure at US Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. There the students take rides in spaceflight simulators and explore life as an astronaut. Special programs introduce students to everything from the operation systems of the Space Shuttle to the science of hydroponic food production. For most students from this rural, triethnic community, the trip represents their first time away from home and their first exposure to the world of science and technology. To attend Space Camp, students must raise enough money to cover the cost of tuition and travel, typically well over a thousand dollars. Students hit up their parents, but in most cases have to do fundraisers like car washes or trash collection at rodeos and fairs. In recent years, Mr. Jaques has teamed up with the CSGC program at Fort Lewis College as a way of providing funds for students who are having trouble raising the total amount. Some of Mr. Jaques' students apply for "scholarships" from CSGC by writing a letter to the Fort Lewis College grant director requesting support. In spring 2002, scholarships were awarded to ten students. In this way, CSGC supports the efforts of an enthusiastic local K-12 Mr. Jaques' Junior Space Cadets at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama teacher as he strives to fill his students with interest in science, technology and space. Colorado State University, Fort Collins Undergraduate students at Colorado State University can apply for financial support from the Space Grant to work over the summer on projects they propose as individuals or groups. Over the summer of 2002 student proposals focused on numerical modeling of the fluid flow through shuttle main engine turbopumps, composing a symphony to celebrate a launch, analyzing composite structures, developing wear tests to evaluate flame-sprayed surface treatments, and proposing and evaluating Exterior Appearance with Membrane in place. Mars habitats. An example of the work that has been done is the Mars habitat development effort of Jeff Carlson, a Colorado State University senior Civil Engineering student. Jeff also worked with Space Grant support during the summer of 2001 when he modeled fluid flow around the space shuttle at launch, so this example constitutes his second year effort under the program. He has proposed a 9-m diameter habitat that has been designed to be compact and lightweight so it can be transported readily in a folded form and then deployed on Mars. The figure below shows interior features of the deployed structure that was created in Auto- CAD. It consists of a core (in blue) and structure (in gray) which could be made from graphite composite material. Also shown are floors (in yellow) and stairs (in green). The structure shown above would be covered with a high-strength outer membrane such as Kevlar that is supported by a system of rib members that tie the outer membrane to the inner core and produce the exterior appearance shown above. Martian soil would be placed over the membrane to provide radiation shielding. This soil load and an interior pressure load were considered in doing numerical structural analyses of the habitat. Interior Structures Feature 3

4 Professors and Professionals Get Their Hands Dirty and Fly! This June the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (CSGC) at the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder had the honor of hosting a national workshop Starting Student Space Hardware Programs. Participants in the first Starting Student Space Hardware Programs national workshop. The workshop was a hands-on, how-to experience for over 65 educators in universities from 34 states, who were interested in beginning mini-satellite programs like CSGC s BalloonSat, Arizona State University s CanSat, and Stanford University s CanSat and CricketSat. Conference instructors included professors from CU, ASU, Iowa, Montana, and Stanford. The workshop was organized in response to a program of NASA s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program called Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly! One of the missions of this program is to disseminate information about creating and expanding space hardware programs at universities throughout the United States. The conference at CSGC was a collaboration of ideas from professors at universities that currently have small satellite programs. Participants at the conference were put into teams to make their own minisatellites. Professors, professionals, and students, designed and built CricketSats and BalloonSats. The excitement of the event culminated A picture taken by the BalloonSat built by Team Nevada while the satellite was at the edge of space. in a launch of BalloonSats at dawn on the final day of the workshop. Teams traveled to Deer Trail, Colorado, where they launched the 21 mini-satellites on three balloons. Following the successful launch of all payloads, teams began the chase for Teams design and build BalloonSats. recovery, using GPS tracking systems and maps. All payloads were recovered, save one, which disconnected from the balloon sometime during flight and has not been seen since! Many pictures were developed from the flight, but more importantly, participants left the conference with all the information needed to begin introductory satellite courses at their own institutions. As a result of the success of this workshop, future workshops are being planned. More information, including more pictures from payloads, may be found at spacegrant.colorado.edu/studentsat 2002 Colorado Space Grant Symposium Winners In April Colorado Space Grant at the University of Colorado at Boulder hosted the annual Undergraduate Space Research Student Symposium. This year s theme was Technologies of Tomorrow. 38 papers were presented on topics ranging from examining data from Hubble to gamma ray bursts and orbit tracking. There was also a poster session with 6 participants. Dr. James Stewart was the guest speaker and gave a luncheon talk. Judges for the competition were Robert Walch, University of Northern Colorado; Suzanne Traub-Metlay, Front Range Community College; Phillip Tefft, Lockheed Martin; Mark Bigler, Lockheed Martin; David Bartlett, University of Colorado at Boulder; Caroline Chouinard, Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Sherry Oaks, University of Colorado at Denver; Jim Ingersoll, Ball Aerospace; Clyde O Quinn, Ball Aerospace; and CSGC alumn and JPL engineer, Collette Wilklow. Winners of the symposium received $100 and were: Luke Sauter, USAFA, Orbit Tracking; Michael Gardner, Colorado State University, Ion Beam Sputtering; Richard Lyon, USAFA, Thermal Model; Katie Dunn and Scott Miller, University of Colorado at Boulder, Citizen Explorer; Michelle Stemple, University of Colorado at Boulder, Europa; and Kate Worster, University of Colorado at Boulder, Outreach. Patricia Mills, University of Northern Colorado, won the poster session with her poster about Titan s Atmosphere. More information is available at spacegrant.colorado.edu/symposium. 4

5 Student Spotlight: The News interviewed CU students Katie Dunn, Aerospace Engineering Junior, and Anthony Lowrey, Aerospace Engineering Senior. Katie Dunn Interview News: How did you get started with Space Grant? Dunn: I came on a tour while I was still in high school. I saw Space Grant and saw what the students were working on and thought that s what I want to do. I m going to do that. CSGC student, Katie Dunn, is the Project Manager for the Citizen Explorer Mission. News: What is your current position at Space Grant? Dunn: I am project manager of the Citizen Explorer (CX) mission. News: What do you like most about being project manager? Dunn: I like that in addition to working on hardware and problem solving, I get to work with people, helping them get the resources they need and listening to their project status what is working well, or not working at all. I also like the fact that I am challenged to look at the satellite from a systems point of view. News: How is the CX mission coming along? Dunn: Pretty well. This summer we made a lot of progress! We did solar panel testing and through that, tested the satellite s power system. We also achieved communication with the satellite from mission control something that had never been fully tested before. News: What was the outcome of the testing? Dunn: It works! (Laughs) Testing went very well. We are all excited with the progress of the mission. News: What s next for CX? Dunn: The hardware is really close. Software is still a hurdle. We need to finish writing both flight and ground software. We have an incredible software team and they are making great progress. We also need to do Mission Operations testing. News: What would you like to do when you graduate? Dunn: Whether they are sending up people or hardware, I want to be a part of it! I got the space bug in 5th grade while making a poster of the solar system. Since then, it s all I ve ever wanted to do. Anthony Lowrey Interview News: How did you first hear about Space Grant and initially get involved? Lowrey: I heard about Space Grant during Freshmen Orientation. I then heard another presentation during my Freshman Intro to Aerospace class. The student who gave the presentation talked about testing that was going on. The summer after my freshman year I walked into Elaine s office and asked can I work here? News: What projects have you worked on since you ve been in Space Grant? Lowrey: I started on ground operations of the CX mission designing web pages. When the team changed to Web Management, I was team lead. I was then moved to structures for CX. and eventually ended up working on the Three Corner Satellite (3CS) mission on the Slow Down Mechanism. News: What is the Slow Down Mechanism (SDM)? Lowrey: Well, 3CS is a constellation of three nanosatellites. They were designed to deploy from the Shuttle in a stack and then separate and fly in formation. Along the mission, it was discovered that the rate in which the satellites would be separating would render their intersatellite communications useless in a short amount time. A slow down mechanism was designed to lessen the rate of separation. I came into the slow down project after the initial design was completed. The student who had completed the first design had graduated, so I was asked to step in and continue with testing. A peer and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to complete testing of the mechanism. News: How did the testing go? Lowrey: It went well, but we realized that there was a lot more work to do. It lead to the revisions we ve made today. We came back from D.C. and set up a schedule and got working on revisions. Unfortunately 3CS scrapped the SDM project because they felt that it was not possible to fully test the mechanism in time for launch. News: Are you still working on SDM? Lowrey: Yes we are. There was renewed interest in the SDM this summer from Utah State University so we continued our work and even did a Critical Design Review. Four engineers from Lockheed Martin and one from Ball Aerospace came and spent a day reviewing our work and giving us feedback. It was great! The engineers exposed all the design flaws and set us in the right direction for revisions and testing. I m glad we have had the opportunity to continue working on the SDM. This has been an opportunity that many students do not get. There were just two of us, working on a mechanism that had the possibility of being flight hardware. It s one of the most interesting things I ve done as an undergraduate. CSGC student, Anthony Lowrey, is the Structures Team Lead for the Citizen Explorer Mission. News: What else are you doing at Space Grant? Lowrey: I worked on the Systems team of CX while I was working on the SDM. I got to learn about the whole system of a satellite. It was great. I am currently Structures Team Lead for the CX mission. We have a lot of testing to look forward to - vibration and spin testing, among others. News: What do you see yourself doing after you finish your degree? Lowrey: I think it would be cool to work on a structures team on spacecraft, on mechanisms specifically, for a manned space flight. 5

6 Colorado Space Grant Consortium 520 UCB Boulder, CO Address Contact Information and Contributors JPL Support General: 520 UCB Boulder, CO spacegrant.colorado.edu Phone: (303) Fax: (303) Elaine R. Hansen: Director (303) Chris Koehler: Deputy Director (303) Bernadette Garcia: Program and Outreach Coordinator (303) Contributors to this issue: Patty Arnold, Space Foundation William Brown, University of Southern Colorado Ashley Shultz, Fort Lewis College Ted Violett, Western State College Paul Wilbur, Colorado State University The Colorado Space Grant team is working with the JPL Artificial Intelligence Group in the testing, debugging and demonstration of the continuous planning approach and tools. These tools have been tailored to the Three Corner Satellite (3CS) constellation of satellites planned for launch in CS formation flying will allow commands to be passed form one satellite to another. Given that the planning and scheduling for the entire constellation will happen on one satellite, the CASPER model needs to communicate its commands to the other satellites approximate their resources, and know when to commit new commands to other satellites. Space Grant students and staff have been working with the JPL Artificial Intelligence Group (AIG) to tailor, apply, and demonstrate the CAPSER realtime planning software on the 3CS constellation. The tailoring of the JPL-developed CAPSER software has been completed by the JPL and Space Grant team. CSGC, working with the JPL Artificial Intelligence Group, will continue this effort in