The flipped classroom is just one of several modern teaching methods used for projects at Iowa State Aerospace Engineering (Iowa State University/Matthew Nelson)
Dr. Matthew Nelson (Iowa State) presented information about the M:2:I “Make to Innovate” initiative at Iowa State University’s Department of Aerospace Engineering.
The academic program recasts student aerospace projects as the work products of a technical elective, offered as a hands-on “flipped classroom” experience, with a common project management approach and support from Faculty and Industry experts.
What will lunar communications look like in a decade? One option is satellite swarms at Earth-Moon L1 and L2 – which opens up problems that are tricky to model and challenging to execute. (Missouri S&T/Henry Pernicka)
Dr. Henry Pernicka (Ohio Northern University) is studying how to corral swarms of small satellites when they’re tossed into a halo orbits at Earth-Moon L1 and L2.
Swarms solve some of the reliability problems always feared in solo spacecraft in “deep space” that can’t easily be replaced. But they’re also difficult to fly in formation near the Lagrange points, where even slight differences in trajectory can quickly turn a tight formation into an M. C. Escher painting.
750m resolution photometric data shows light pollution in the upper midwest, 2019. (Suomi NPP/Ohio Northern University/Bryan Boulanger)
Dr. Bryan Boulanger (Ohio Northern University) is a Civil Engineer active in the International Dark Sky Association, who shared developments in floodlight design and photometry, key parts of the battle to curb light pollution and return stars to the night sky.
The talk went beyond the familiar photos of Earth at night – one striking slide showed hard data taken at 750 meter resolution by the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite, showing the excessive light generation in places like Minneapolis-St. Paul and the industrialized portions of western North Dakota. The hard photometric numbers show just how much the problem has worsened – and where.
An Antares rocket carries Cygnus NG-12, SS Alan Bean, on a mission to the International Space Station, 2 Nov 2019 1359 UT (NASA TV)
Apart from 3729 kg of cargo bound for the International Space Station, CRS 12 was also the launch platform for ELaNa 25A, the latest in NASA’s ongoing university space access program, including missions from Montana and Minnesota: RADSAT-U and SOCRATES.
RADSAT-U
RADSAT-U internal structure (Montana State University)
How can you build a computer you can count on in deep space, where stray radiation can randomly crash the average PC? RADSAT-U, a 3U cubesat project from Montana State University, aims to demonstrate a radiation-tolerant computer hardware architecture that users can count on in space, an environment that’s never been kind to silicon wafers.
The final push to complete the computer experiment was lead by Chris Major, a computer engineer and Ph.D candidate in electrical engineering at Montana State, who picked up the effort from the previous student design team in the early months of 2019, running up to final completion and delivery for payload integration a few months before the launch.
In addition to the primary computing experiment, a second experiment aboard RADSAT-U studies how the effects of radiation environment affect solar cells. An additional solar cell of the same type used on the craft’s exterior is mounted inside the craft. Montana State undergraduates will study the experiment’s results.
Data from the craft will be relayed directly to the university in quarter-kilobyte packets transmitted over amateur radio frequencies. After Montana State’s SSEL calculates the pass time, a team member will be on hand to collect the data packets when the craft passes overhead.
Three members of the RADSAT-U team, including Major, attended the launch at Wallops Island, Virginia.
RADSAT-U is expected to be in orbit for up to two and a half years. The mission was student-built at Montana State University under the supervision of Dr. Brock LaMeres, with technical support from the university’s Space Science Engineering Laboratory and supplemental expertise from the Montana Space Grant Consortium.
SOCRATES internal structure (University of Minnesota / Kennedy Space Center)
SOCRATES is a project from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a 3U cubesat that includes a gamma ray burst detector with a unique purpose.
How can spacecraft navigate without GPS in the far reaches of the solar system? SOCRATES, from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, is a 3U cubesat carrying an experiment to answer that question. At its heart are four bricks of Thallium-doped Caesium Iodide, which glow in the dark whenever a cosmic ray happens to pass.
Those flashes of light can become space-GPS by taking careful measurements and referencing the satellite’s highly accurate onboard clock, then exchanging information with other similar observatories. As members join the network, each spacecraft can determine its position relative to the others, based on the time each of them detected the gamma ray burst.
SOCRATES is expected to be in orbit for just over two years. A companion satellite, EXACT, is hoped to be launched while SOCRATES is still in space. Both are projects of the UMN Smallsat team supervised by Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher and Dr. Lindsay Glesener at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department.
Chirstina Koch (red) and Jessica Meir service the Battery Charge Discharge Unit on the International Space Station, 18 Oct 2019. ISS EVA221 was the first spacewalk performed by two women. (NASA TV)
Michelle Brekke of Boeing Crew Space Transportation serves as Grand Marshall of the University of Minnesota homecoming parade (University of Minnesota/GopherSports)
A Proton-M rocket launches from Baikonur 08 October 2019 1017 UT, with Eutelsat 5 West B commsat and the MEV-1 mission extension robot aboard (Credit: Roscosmos)
Outage regions for the Global Positioning System, 8 June 2019. (Credit: FAA)
Passenger airline flights were affected Saturday and Sunday 8 and 9 June 2019, due to an expected minor signal outage, plus a glitch with a particular type of GPS receiver. The affected planes were mostly Bombardier CRJ-200 and CRJ-700s, but also included CRJ-900s, as well as Boeing 737 and 767s.
Reports on Airliners.net indicate particular concerns with GPS receivers supplied by Rockwell Collins. In case the airplane’s barometer were to fail, the onboard GPS receiver must be able to track altitude accurately enough to maintain normal operations in the Class A airspace above FL180. This requires a GPS vertical accuracy within 500 feet (152 meters), and that the GPS constellation be in fairly good alignment – which, every now and then, just doesn’t happen.
That’s what occurred this weekend over a region over the Great Lakes and extending out over much of North Dakota and Manitoba, such that certain areas can expect, in theory, up to 40 minutes of signal loss on Sunday. The FAA estimated still further regions in the US could be affected by the outage. As affected planes wait for a technical fix, they are flying below 18000 feet, or simply being replaced by unaffected aircraft.
Airliners with the strictest requirements for their their GPS accuracy had to rely on alternative navigation modes when operating in the red region. (Credit: FAA)
In addition to highlighting the performance of one supplier’s GPS solution in an edge case, the incident also serves to highlight an increasing dependence on GPS for airline operations. Aviators have expressed concern about the trend of airports turning off their ILS, VOR, and NDB navigation systems. Many of these decisions assume that GPS will always be available, which may well be more than 98% correct. It’s the last 2% that may lead to unexpected problems.
SpaceX CRS-17 launched from Cape Canaveral on an all-new Falcon 9 rocket 4 May 2019 0248 UT. The reused Cargo Dragon capsule previously flown on CRS-12 in 2017 is bound once more for the International Space Station, where it is due to arrive 6 May 2019 1100 UT.
The 2500 kg cargo manifest includes over 20 science payloads, including the experiment selected by the “Genes in Space” competition, proposed by students from Woodbury High School and Mounds View High School in Minnesota. The experiment will use CRISPR-Cas9 to damage yeast cells and test their ability to self-repair DNA; the payload will also perform an on-orbit PCR. CRS-17 is also carrying an Iowa algae study, a Montana yeast pathogen study (among other human cell flex-chips), and the ingredients for cancer drug crystals and drug-delivery nanoparticles, which will be fabricated on-orbit.
In the end, CRS-17 was delayed from yesterday’s scheduled departure not by weather, but due to a faulty generator on the recovery ship. SpaceX repaired the vessel onshore and returned it to the landing zone off the Jacksonville coast. A minor helium leak at the pad (not from the rocket) was also repaired.
