Student Experiments, Education, and Training with Small Satellites

Abstract

The use of small satellites as a tool for education, training, and recruitment of new talent for engineers and scientists in the field space applications and space science has grown enormously in the past two decades. Perhaps the most significant event in this regard was the defining of the cubesat standard and then the subsequent definition of the pocketqube standard that has followed more recently. Indeed the development of concepts of the femtosat, picosat, and nanosat have allowed the development of ways to undertake student experiments in much more costeffective ways for student experimenters to undertake projects within the resources of colleges, universities, and even students at the pre-university level. Projects to undertake mini-experiments that can be carried out on-board the International Space Station (ISS) or other spacecraft designed to carry out space experiments have broaden the scope of student space experiments in scores of countries around the world, broadening the scope and extent of space education. There are now multiple groups, organizations, and foundations, plus most space agencies, providing active support, training sessions, and contract awards to universities to foster and encourage these new initiatives for students and university researchers. These sponsors, among numerous others, include institutions and nonprofits that sponsor STEM educational initiatives and space agencies such as NASA, ESA, Canadian Space Agency, CNES (French Space Agency), and JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency. These organizations, foundations, institutes and space agencies provide new opportunities for cubesat training and actual projects, provide research grants, offer assistance with regard to technological and safety screening, provide relevant research grants and contracts, and assist with regard to launch arrangements - all to facilitate student smallsat tests and experiments. This article describes the types of space experiments that are now possible with various types of smallsats. It provides background with regard to the most commonly used standards that are employed for these experiments and how to arrange for these smallsat experiments to be launched into space. This covers primarily nanosats (or cubesats) and picosats (such as pocketqubes). There is even some discussion of femtosats, at the very smallest end, and microsats at higher end of such programs. In the case of microsats of up to 100 kg, this most typically would be a developing country with a smallsat project leading an activity but perhaps one or more national university assisting in the satellite definition or assisting in training related to the operation of the microsat. There are today a wide range of universities, colleges, institutes, schools, foundations, organizations, and space agencies all seeking to promote smallsat space experimentation, technology verification, and proof of concept. There are also an increasing number of projects where university projects are actually seeking to verify smallsat systems for practical commercial projects. In the majority of cases, such projects are a means of providing training for young people and to excite their interest into the world of aerospace engineering and space applications. Finally there is a discussion in this article about two subjects of particular concern. One issue is the reliability issue (or failure rate) concerning academic and student-related small satellite projects. The other is about concerns related to the longer-term sustainability of space and how student experimentation can be conducted so as to minimize the creation of space debris and space objects that remain in orbit.