Find the specific thermal properties of a satellite, taking into consideration the expansion and contraction of metal, the time of day or night the satellite is in orbit and its position in relation to the sun. Sounds like a typical, if not painstakingly involved, College of Engineering student’s homework problem.
But for College of Engineering sophomore Joseph Wilinski, this is not just any assignment. He is taking this one to a whole new level: out of this world.
Wilinski is building a satellite — NanoSat 5 — that he and 69 other ENG undergraduates hope will go into space within the next few years.
The students are part of the Boston University Student-satellite for Applications and Training team, one of 10 groups competing for the chance to launch a satellite of their design into space winter 2009 through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research University Nanosat Program.
70 STUDENTS, 12 TEAMS, ONE
SATELLITE
If BU wins the competition, the students’ satellite will be launched over the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, where particles of radiation belts interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, creating at once a spectacular show and for these ENG students, a unique research opportunity.
This proposed satellite “will acquire energetic electron data at high latitudes and will simultaneously acquire optical images of auroral arcs from horizon to horizon,” according to the BUSAT website.
In the process of testing ideas suitable for space, the 12 smaller teams into which the BU students are split for the project are designing, building and learning what it is like to do intensive research with a deadline. January is the next due date.
“It’s a lot of research and design time,” Wilinski said, “but it’s really awesome to be given a problem, brainstorm for ideas that are functional, actually draw those ideas and test to see if they are suitable for a space mission.”
Within each of the 12 smaller subsystem teams, which are working out problems in areas including Educational Cubes, Exoskeleton, Ground Support Equipment, Solar Arrays and Thermal Design, each student has a specific job. Wilinski is part of the Cubes Design team, which is designing the modular cube — many small cubes held together by pressure created from a commercially available locking device, which Wilinski said resembles a Rubik’s cube, that wedges itself between the walls of the satellite’s exoskeleton.
The Cubes Design team drew the cubes on CAD programs and will be constructing them this fall.
“[This summer I] helped to design the Modular Cube Design, working on creating a concise document in which we state our team’s objectives and requirements,” Wilinski said, “finding materials that are military and space-grade (thermal, vacuum, pressure characteristics), calling suppliers for material availability, investigating several different designs that do work, could work, and do not work.”
The project is overseen by a group of professors including College of Arts and Sciences Astronomy professor Theodore Fritz and doctoral student David Voss (ENG ’09), but it is solely the work of undergraduate students.
SPACED-OUT SUMMER
According to the AFOSR University NanoSat Program web site, the objective is “to train tomorrow’s generation of space professionals by providing a rigorous two year concept.” Since the program first launched the competitions in 1999, 25 institutions and nearly 2,500 undergraduate students have been involved.
Fritz, who refers to the program as NanoSat 5, got involved last year when doctoral student Voss — who was involved as an undergraduate in NanoSat 3 at Taylor University in Upland, Ind. — suggested the idea. “His enthusiasm was an important factor in me putting together the proposal that would put together a team for BU.”
Fritz received word in February that BU was in the competition. Initially, Fritz said, there was an overwhelming response to and interest in the program, and working on the project only during the school year was not enough for some of the students.
Fritz spoke with university officials and pooled together enough funds for 30 of the students to stay and work full-time for 10 weeks this summer.
BACK TO EARTH
“I believe that the program actually has created an itch in part of the aerospace students that shows there is a real interest,” Fritz said. “It has illustrated that there is a need for such programs within the university.”
Students — those who are ENG seniors — are doing work befitting working engineers, but they aren’t forgetting they are still college students. Fritz recently proposed that the administration allow seniors contributing to the BUSAT project to use that work to fulfill the college’s senior design requirement for graduation.
“We are trying to provide an avenue that would allow for some academic requirements [to be met],” he said.
ON DEADLINE
The teams are working around the clock, but that clock is ticking: they must have the critical review design completed and submitted by January. The critical review design gives the AFOSR a chance to approve the satellite thus far.
“The biggest challenge is just that we are a large group working in an academic environment,” said Project Manager David Voss. “It’s a challenging thing to do, overcome schedules, and each semester is another story with new people and new classes, new challenges.”
No new students are joining the original 70, but the group’s dynamic is changing as the subsystem teams build new connections with each other as their individual components of the satellite construction come together.
BUSAT will submit its final project in spring 2009. And then they wait; they will not know the results until winter. If the team wins the competition, they will be funded to build the satellite again — this time for real, for the Air Force to keep and launch.
THE SKY’S THE LIMIT
While the students are anxious to have their spacecraft take flight, not all have the desire to take off with it. Voss wants to work in spacecraft design, but he said he has no desire to go into space himself.
“It’s very rewarding, beginning to understand what’s involved in the research process,” Voss said. “Also, to see something you’re designing, to see it come together as a machine.”
“It’s a lot of fun,” he added.
