Design of an Undergraduate 3-Axis Space Science Satellite
Abstract
The fundamental objectives of the capstone design project in the Department of Astronautics at the United States Air Force Academy are for cadets to learn important engineering lessons by executing a real space mission on a Department of Defense-funded satellite project. FalconSAT-5 is a 153 kg, three-axis stabilized spacecraft being designed and built by cadets and scheduled for launch in December 2009 on a Minotaur-IV from Kodiak, Alaska. The satellite has a space science mission to measure the local state of the ionosphere at ambient conditions with the intelligent Miniaturized Electrostatic Analyzer (iMESA) instrument and higher energy ions with the Wafer Integrated Spectrometers (WISPERS) instrument. There is also an RF receiver that can tune in the VHF and UHF bands in order to measure RF scintillation and correlate large scale ionospheric variations with the local iMESA and WISPERS measurements. One additional science objective is to understand and measure the interaction of generated plasmas with the body of a satellite and the local magnetic fields.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA543957
Entities
People
- Martin E. France
- William W. Saylor
Organizations
- United States Air Force Academy