With deadlines in mind, students take an attitude check
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During the summer, while many college students went to the beach, a few dozen BU engineering students headed off to space. More than 60 undergraduates are currently designing and building BU’s entry in the University Nanosatellite Program, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, and about half of them got started on the project this summer.
Every other year, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research gives about 10 university teams the chance to design and build a satellite, guaranteeing the winners a launch. The plan is for the BU satellite to hover over the aurora borealis, known as the northern lights, which are produced when particles from radiation belts hundreds of miles out in space interact with Earth’s atmosphere. The measurements and images taken by the satellite are intended to test and enhance an existing computer model of these auroras, as part of an effort to better predict space weather that can damage spacecraft electronics and disrupt communication networks such as pagers and cell phones.
The project is being overseen by Theodore Fritz, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of astronomy, a handful of other professors, and College of Engineering doctoral student David Voss, but the design, the engineering, and the presentations are being done by the undergrads. They are working in about a dozen teams on the satellite’s different subsystems, such as the probes and imaging equipment, the ground control station that will be housed at BU, and the orbital adjustment system. BU Today will check in on their progress periodically throughout the year.
In this installment, College of Engineering undergraduate Jeanette Hancock, part of the team working on the satellite’s “attitude” control system (i.e., keeping the craft and its various instruments properly oriented as it orbits Earth), talks about the project.
Hancock is confident that the BU group will complete the competition with a working satellite. “I definitely don’t feel like we have plenty of time,” she says. “But I also don’t feel like we’re crunched and we’re not going to make our deadline.”
To read "Part one: BU engineering students design and build a satellite" click here.
To read "Part three: Getting to 'all systems go'" click here.
To read “Part four: Student-built satellite faces biggest test yet” click here.
- Chris Berdick
The slideshow and article originally appeared in BU Today on September 6, 2007.
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