Ole Miss Engineering Group to Build and Launch Satellite

UNIVERSITY, MS - For a group of undergraduate engineering students, their research in small satellites will soon become a reality. These students, from both the computer science and electrical engineering departments, have been working for the past year on the development of a small satellite. The satellite, known as the Mississippi Imaging Space Satellite 1 or "MISSat-1", will be launched with the primary mission of imaging the earth with special emphasis on capturing pictures of Mississippi. Captured images will be relayed back to earth via the University's ground station recently configured and tested by the group in Anderson Hall.

The satellite currently under development falls into the CubeSAT category. These satellites are very small in nature, measuring 10x10x10 cm3 and weighing approximately 1 Kg and are designed to operate in the low earth orbit. These CubeSAT's follow the specifications and guidelines laid out by the founders of the CubeSAT project at Cal Poly and Stanford Universities. The mission of the "MISSat-1" project is to quickly and efficiently develop a CubeSAT to perform basic operations. Students are led by their advisors Prof. Atef Elsherbeni and Instructor Matthew J. Inman from the Electrical Engineering Department.

CubeSAT's are generally developed using commodity components in a modular configuration. This allows each student-lead team to select appropriate systems necessary to build a complete satellite. Each student in the MISSat-1 program takes complete responsibility for one of the major system components in the satellite such as power, communications, structure, and programming.

The primary mission of MISSat-1 is to provide the ability to take images of the earth with a small and inexpensive satellite. The advantage of using the CubeSAT platform is the ability to acquire modules to perform the necessary functions of the satellite and assemble them in a "plug-and-play" manner. The student team is currently developing the software necessary for the satellite to operate and build the imaging payload for the system by using a small camera sensor commonly found inside cellphones.

Building the CubeSAT is only a small part of the challenges facing the student team. Being able to make contact with the satellite once it is in orbit requires a new state-of-the-art ground station in order to perform the required communications. This team has recently finished designing and installing a satellite ground station on the roof of Anderson Hall. This new station includes VHF/UHF satellite transceivers, a new antenna structure, high gain satellite antennas, and automated computerized rotator control to track the satellites as they orbit overhead. While many of these components can be purchased, students have assembled them into a working satellite ground station as well as designed and implemented the computerized control of the antenna rotator system. This ground station will give the team a platform to practice making contact with satellites currently in orbit until they launch their own first CubeSAT, MISSat-1.

Several challenges and learning opportunities are facing these young engineers, but they are confident that they will be successful. This project is partially sponsored by a NASA grant, the School of Engineering, and the Electrical Engineering Department. The group is looking for additional sponsors to achieve their goals. For further information please email atef@olemiss.edu

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