Cal Poly Visits JPL
Wednesday October 15th, NASA JPL hosted an event to celebrating the Cal Poly and JPL partnership. CubeSat and PolySat received much recognition.
Cal Poly’s President Jeffrey Armstrong and the Engineering Dean Debra Larson sat on a panel with JPL to answer questions regarding the CubeSat/PolySat programs and the JPL partnership.
The IPEX team was chosen for a group achievement award from NASA. Thank you everyone for the hard work that went into that mission and the continued work of operating it.
Cal Poly’s President Jeffrey Armstrong and the Dean of Engineering Debra Larson with the PolySat and CubeSat team in front of Voyager at JPL.
The IPEX team receiving an award from NASA.
ExoCube gets integrated into a PPOD
ExoCube has been delivered!
The ExoCube (CP10) flight model pictured below was delivered to CubeSat for the ELaNa X mission with SMAP. The PPOD with the integrated satellite has passed acceptance testing and will soon be mounted to the rocket. SMAP will launch in a few months from Vandenberg Air Force Base atop a Delta II.
Exocube is a combined effort of Scientific Solutions, Cal Poly, NASA Goddard, The National Science Foundation, University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin.
ExoCube will characterize [O], [H], [He], [N2], [O+], [H+], [He+], [NO+], and total ion density by taking in-situ measurements within the exosphere, while taking particular interest in orbital locations above various radio observatories. ExoCube uses an active control system to point itself in the desired direction for measurements, and uses passive control to maintain this orientation.
Bill Nye Visits Lab For LightSail Testing
The PolySat/CubeSat lab was visited by a special guest this week. Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society, stopped by Cal Poly to meet with members of the LightSail CubeSat team. LightSail, a 3U CubeSat sponsored by the member-funded organization, has the mission to deploy a 32 square meter solar sail while in orbit. The goal of the visit was to view a deployment test of the solar sail. Unfortunately there were issues that have now pushed back the deployment test to a later date. In addition to hosting the deployment test, the Cal Poly team will be providing environmental testing support in preparation for launch, and operations through the Earth Station after launch. LightSail-A is planned for launch in 2015 and will be used to prove out the design, however solar sailing won’t be attempted until LightSail-B is launched, currently planned for April 2016 on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
More IPEX Images!
IPEX continues to amaze us with the imagery sent back. Here are a few selected images.
The second image has northern California in it. We almost got one of San Luis Obispo, but we’re slightly out of the images frame.
New Ground Station Taking Shape
In order to better communicate with our spacecraft we are building our third ground station on the Cal Poly campus. This new ground station will feature quad phased yagi antennas with ability to transmit up to 1.5KW. The new system will be using the Cal Poly developed systemboard as our radio. It will also feature automatic pass operations. We recently began construction of the new groundstation on the roof of building 192 with hopes of finishing by the end of the summer.
ExoCube Pushing Forward!
A particularly exciting and educational aspect of PolySat’s comprehensive production process is the design and in-house manufacturing of various structural components. ExoCube, PolySat’s most recent project, implements a modification of the flight-proven and student-designed HyperCube structure that was recently flown as a 1U form-factor for the IPEX mission. To increase educational benefits and expand the technical capabilities of the PolySat lab, many of the components used within the ExoCube mechanical structure have been manufactured by PolySat students using Cal Poly‘s on-campus machine shops. For the past several months, the ExoCube mechanical team has been working to finalize design and manufacturing, and we are excited to have finalized hardware that has been machined in recent weeks!
IPEX's Continued Success
The PolySat team has been working diligently at continued improvements to the groundstation. Since the last post, we have downlinked several more images, and below are some of the best images yet!
A shot of the Hawaiian islands:
Beautiful clouds over the Pacific:
A frigid looking shot near the Pacific Rim:
All TLE images obtained using STK10
We will continue to post images as we receive them!
IPEX's First Full Resolution Image!
For the past several weeks following P-POD deployment, IPEX has been downlinking images to Cal Poly’s upgraded groundstation to verify that the imaging and communications systems are working as expected. We have recently received approval to release one of the first IPEX images captured post-deployment, and are excited to share with the community! This image was taken on December 6, 2013 at 11:05 UTC using the -Z camera while IPEX was traversing over the Australian coast, pointed southwest towards the terminator line.
The successful capture, storage, and downlink of the recent IPEX images represents an important milestone for PolySat’s technical and operational capabilities. IPEX is the first CubeSat to use PolySat’s new avionics suite, comprised of a variety of custom PCBs and a Tyvak Intrepid systemboard/comm board package. The timely and efficient downlink of one of IPEX’s high-resolution deployment images such as this one adequately verifies not only PolySat’s new avionics bus, but the recent upgrades to the Cal Poly ground station as well. We are excited to continue IPEX operations!
Obtained using STK10