KySat

KySat: "Business in Zero G"

[This is the final post from the first KySat Conference, which was held in Lexington, Kentucky on May 3. All posts from the conference can be found under the KySat Conference 07 in the category cloud, right column.

Image source: Geoff Oliver Bugbee, www.geoffbugbee.com]

Seated left to right are Bob Twiggs, CubeSat pioneer; Greg Schmidt, NASA Ames; and Scott Hubbard, Carl Sagan Chair, SETI Institute. What follows are a few of the questions they fielded in an open question and answer session.

Can a CubeSat be sent to the Moon? - A carrier could get it to orbit, with another booster taking it from there. Using a very elliptical orbit might help a CubeSat escape gravity to get to the moon. Motors in various sizes are needed, but they don't require brand new technology - liquid, solid, hybrid motors are all candidates.

How Will Nanontechology affect Small Sats? - Surrey, for example, has said that satellites "no bigger than credit cards" will be available. GeneSat showed that large equipment is not necessary to get good information.

Small satellites will incorporate attitude control soon. When that happens, solar panels can be pointed in the right direction. Antennas can use gain. That will be a major enhancement. But gigabyte downloads probably won't be possible given the power restrictions. If the cost stays low there are many, many possibilities.

Small Sats will make it economical to bring payloads home for study. "Twenty percent of the ability at two percent of the cost of average satellites" is a good trade-off.

Ion Propulsion to Control Attitude? Ion propulsion is not yet small enough to panel's knowledge. In the thruster business, engineering seemed to plateau by the mid-eighties. Innovative work in this area is now beginning to occur again.

What can Kentucky do for NASA? An Alliance for Commercial Enterprises in space is one way to get involved. Partner with them.

Will CubeSats be Commercialized? Most universities are just glad to get to orbit, but a Scandinavian student consortium has formed to commercialize CubeSats. "There is be a business for flying the thing and giving people their data." Demand, access, platform - get those parameters right and a business could blossom.

The potential is large: "We only know how business works in 1G."

Wayne

KySat Mission: "Kids, Satellites"

[Image: the original KySat team, currently working to assemble the satellite for shipment and a 2008 launch. Source: Geoff Oliver Bugbee, www.geoffbugbee.com]

"Kids playing with satellites in space." That's the goal for KySat, according to Kris Kimel.

Flying at 650km to 750km, KySat will exceed Hubble in distance from the Earth.

The paperwork for a launch is being done for a 2008 lanuch.

Garret Chandler, the student leader for the original KySat team is up [Garrett is standing on the right in the picture].

Mission objectives

The purpose is build technological interest in students from elementary school through graduate school. Part of the plan is design an attractive operational concept that encourages work. Students will design and build the satellites and, lastly, provide on-orbit support.

Background

KySat got started with an interest in CubeSats. Filled with on water, a CubeSat weighs one kilo. Eight universities have been involved in CubeSat operations. There have been 34 launches, 13 are operational, 14 have been lost.

Communicating with the Playground

The team wants to make it easy to interact with. Garrett discusses the simple equipment for "playground station" to interact with the site. The craft will be able to capture photos and playback software in space that might for, example, say a name. A third grader can snap a photo from space that can can be relayed to ground, printed out and put up on the refrigerator at home.

The satellite might give its location, the temperature in space and say something like, "I'll be back around in 96 minutes."

Satellite capabilities

KySat will be capable of digital communications, audio playback, radio command, command scheduling, continuous wave beacon, digital beacons, data collection and storage, and photo capture.

Garrett describes the electrical grid and bus. The power cells will manage energy requirements of the satellite. The bus will have VHF/HF radio system, S-Band Radio System, digital still camera and mass digital storage, which turns out to be a SD card of the kind found in personal computers.

He emphasizes that the solar array uses some of the most highly efficient solar cells on the market. There are after-production left overs from a manufacturing process currently making some of the best cells on the market.

Antenna deployment: since it's a CubeSat, antennas must deploy in space. He demonstrates what looks like an elastic antenna that physically wraps around the satellite in his hands. Once in space, the material will unfurl to an upright position for communication.

The ground segment will be at Morehead State University. Secondary ground stations - K-12 schools, for example - will be able to communicate with the satellite by Ham radio. 

A data packet network will record signals recorded anywhere in the world and place them on the Internet. Garrett is particularly excited about this.

Capabilities

Data will use Morse code, digital beacons, file transfer, audio telemetry.

Payloads will be photographs and S-Band radio. Audio will be playback and cross-band repeating, which means any two people pointing antennas at the satellite will be able to communicate. Referring to a buddy in Texas, where he's from originally, Garrett says that "Yes, we could the cell phone, but it wouldn't be as fun!"

What's different about the KySat CubeSat?

• Automatic position reporting system compatible
• Morehead 21-meter S-Band Communications will be unique.
• KySat system support module is totally unique. Designed in-house.
• Audio telemetry from a CubeSat is completely unique. The human voice can be heard.
• The rapid development has exceeded other CubeSat prototyping. Once KySat1 is done, it will be used again and modified quickly for future missions.
• Education focus.

Timetable

On May 14 and 15, the satellite will come together for the first time in Lexington. The entire team will participate. A "fly model" will be put together in September in a clean room. A launch integrator will take the shipped satellite and get it to Russia for flight.

Suppliers include TenSat, Clyde Space Pumpkin and SpectroLab.

Other team members from Morehead State, Murray State the commonwealth's universities are introduced, who talk about their experiences and specific contributions to the project, about the incredulous looks from people when they explain what they do. They look very happy indeed.

Garrett, who will be leaving graduate school, confesses that he is having trouble deciding where to go from here. There are almost too many opportunities.

Q&A:
Will future teams be diverse like KySa1?

Yes. Jennifer, who describes herself as a "girl from Eastern Kentucky," said that "the opportunities weren't obvious to me. It's been really rewarding to tell people in the state that the opportunities are here."

Kris points out that the brand new KySat2 team had two women as members (one had to drop out unexpectedly). Diversity is a focus of KySat. To drive future missions forward, diverse talent must be found and cultivated.

How can school children in Kentucky hear the satellite?

Online schedule for overhead passes is available from NASA web site. An antenna pointed in the right direction can hear what's going on - it can be put together very inexpensively. A curricula for elementary educators will be developed.

SETI, KySat and Possibility

Kentucky native Scott Hubbard, according to KySat founder Kris Kimel, who introduces him, was at one time the "Mars Czar."

But he's currently the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, which is a private nonprofit organization whose mission is to "explore and explain the nature and prevalence of life in the universe."

You may know SETI better for this.

About fifty scientists study the potential for life in the universe. "Extremophiles," those organisms, for example, that live in sulfur vents, are an Earth bound object of study for these individuals.

Small Sat Future

"What is the future for small spacecraft missions?" Where is "Sutter's Gold?"

Before getting to those answers, he discusses the work at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., which has pioneered small satellite technology.

And back to answer his question:

1) Space biology - There is radically different gene expression in microgravity. They "light up in space." Lignum, a compound vital to connective tissue growth in plants, can be studied in that environment in ways that can't be accomplished on Earth.

GeneSat is a clever biological project. He shows an animation of GeneSat that appears to show the satellite exposing its cargo to space. What other science can small sats carry out?

2) Regional climate change - Small satellites, for instance, might explore the roughly sixteen climate regions of California, to "follow the water" in the state in order to predict climate change. Hubbard believes that Sacramento delta "is a Katrina waiting to happen." He suggests that small satellite technology can answer the question, "how high should the levees be?"

Similarly, Kentucky could use the technology to make observations of special interest to the commonwealth.

A European model for small sat work RapidEye.

3) "Pure Space Science" - Small satellites can be used to return samples of other bodies to Earth for study.

4) Test beds. He shows that what looks like a bent paper clip is actually a better antenna than the current standard. It had to be tested in space aboard a CubeSat to prove what had been worked out on paper.

5) "Operationally Responsive Space" is another use for small sats. These initiatives can get to space in short order to to develop accurate observations of a region.

Potential Small Sat Businesses

As for KySat, Hubbard says, the key is to "drive down the size and drive up the capability."

For example, "bio/info/nano" technology is ideal for small sats. These new technologies expand the business proposition for the diminutive satellites. Organic memory media might be available soon, which will develop unknown flight possibilities by making more software available to the craft.

Bigelow Aeronautics, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are pursuing suborbital opportunities. A space entrepreneurial system that promotes targeted advertising will also emerge. 

Google has changed the business model for software. Likewise, remote sensing satellites have made information available for free. Remote sensing, based on advertising, can turn into a business.

The Far Future

Finishing on a "visionary note," he asks, "what about the far future?"

Describing the quantum entanglement, he wonders if it offers a way to teleportation?

Since 1972, experiments have demonstrated that as light or photons are thrown together, they become entangled. By measuring one, the spin of the other proton is instantly affected. This phenomenon has been demonstrated at distances of 140km.

What spooky communication is happening that occurs even faster than the speed of light?

Could technology devised from this phenomenon be sued to explore interstellar space?

On that, he concludes.

Wayne

KySat: "Partnering with NASA"

[Image credit: Geoff Oliver Bugbee, www.geoffbugbee.com]

Addressing the audience, Greg Schmidt, who is an associate director for strategic planning from NASA Ames, discusses why the relationship between NASA Ames and KySat makes sense.

He acknowledges others, like Bob Twiggs, who spoke earlier, and Kris' work to pull together the funding for the project in a very short period of time. The great thing about the funding is that "extends ownership to a lot of people. Across the Unites States, this project is unique."

He also acknowledges Scott Hubbard, who took the time to introduce Greg to a possible "project in Kentucky," which evolved into KySat. Hubbard is the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life In The Universe at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and a Kentucky native.

"Having just suffered a hard drive failure," his presentation, he adds dryly, "will be shorter."

NASA Ames

NASA Ames was one of the first centers for aeronautics, established in 1938. Unlike the Johnson Space Center, which specializes human space flight, and the Jet Propulsion Lab, which sends probes to the Solar System, NASA Ames is multi-disciplinary. It has historically been active in airborne Earth sciences missions, discovering the Ozone Hole in the Antarctic, for example.

In life sciences, it has studied the affects of microgravity on living organisms.

In the space sciences, an airborne infrared observatory operated by NASA Ames discovered the rings around Uranus.

He was privileged to attend the birth of astrobiology at Ames, which has quickly grown into an international discipline. Thousands of scientists are currently engaged in astrobilogy research.

NASA Ames is now very engaged in the national goal of returning to the Moon, as well as the technology that will be used on the successor to the Space Shuttle. It's also very involved in supercomputing, but it's historic strength is aeronautics, he says. The largest wind tunnel in the world is at NASA Ames.

Space Portal Consortium

He bills the NASA Space Portal consortium as the "friendly front door to NASA."

Space Renaissance

We're at the beginning of a renaissance in space. Why? He lists four reasons:

1) National policy goals specifically direct the agency to explore. 2) Information and miniaturization technology allows many more science efforts than in year's past. Biotechnology is one beneficiary of this trend. 3) NASA is being entrepreneurial. The agency will try to buy services rather than building and operating big pieces of hardware such as the Shuttle.

SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler are two such partnerships. They're both developing launch systems to service the International Space Station. They are also interested, longer term, in leveraging that technology to develop space tourism.

These two developments will help commercialize space, which in turn will develop safer space systems and a safer human environment.

A research park at NASA Ames is fast becoming an ecosystem of space-related development and technology.

He concludes with a discussion of PharmaSat, which is scheduled to launch later this year. It uses easily replaceable modules, which can be deployed for biological work with organisms such as E-coli.

CubeSats are idea for that. Eventually, however, KySat may look to other satellites.

He ends with a quote from Emily Dickenson: "Fortune favors the bold."

"I'm excited to work with a bold group like KySat."

Wayne