Launching in…3…2…1… 🚀
EdEon STEM Learning is launching a satellite soon, and hosting a pre-launch celebration for team members and the public on Monday, November 10th beginning at 9:30am PST.
For the last five years, EdEon students at SSU have worked dedicatedly on a small satellite that is currently scheduled to be launched into space on November 11th.
Their work has ranged from creating the software code that controls the 3UCubed to soldering the wires during the physical build. Students with guidance from professors and staff engineers at SSU, UNH and Howard have performed trade studies, orbit analyses and developed the framework for the flight software and operations–just to name a few of their achievements. To celebrate their hard work and success, EdEon STEM Learning and its partners are hosting an in-person pre-launch party and an online launch viewing.
Pre-Launch Celebration
Monday, November 10th at SSU
Doors open at 9am
Celebration begins at 9:30am PST
3UCubed: The Future of Space Exploration
The minds and attention of society are quickly moving to space. Commercialization of spaceflight, use of satellites orbiting Earth in a multitude of ways, and the mysteries of space slowly unfurling to reveal their truths. Sonoma State University is proud to participate in the 3UCubed Program to educate aspiring scientists, engineers, and computer scientists into the space and engineering industries. SSU students design, build, and test multiple small spacecraft subsystems. The project also involves local amateur (Ham) radio enthusiasts and the scouts with an aim to increase participation in and build excitement for radio communications.
Photo Credit:NASA/Joy NgWhy Cusp Science?
The 3UCubed Mission is particularly interested in the science of the auroral cusp because this region is where solar wind particles directly access Earth’s magnetosphere. The cusp is a dynamic area rich in space weather phenomena, offering a unique environment for studying the transfer of energy and particles from the solar wind into Earth’s near-space environment. Understanding these processes is essential, not only for fundamental space physics, but also for improving space weather forecasting, which has direct implications for both satellite operations and communication systems. The 3UCubed mission aims to gather high-resolution in situ data regarding electron precipitation and atomic oxygen density within the cusp region to better understand the dynamics of the cusp, thereby contributing to broader scientific efforts to model and predict magnetospheric behavior.
Why a CubeSat?
Due to the Earth’s atmosphere interfering with ground based measurements, a satellite is necessary to accomplish the science objectives of the 3UCubed CubeSat mission. A CubeSat, specifically, was chosen for this mission for two reasons. First, its compact size and minimalist design make it far more cost effective than a traditional large scale satellite. Second, the project’s educational goal is to have as much of the mission run and completed by students as possible, and the simplicity of a CubeSat makes this much more achievable than a highly complex, large scale, satellite. Despite their simplicity, CubeSats have proven to be capable of doing impactful scientific research on numerous missions and are being used at institutions across the globe.
Photo Credit:NASA 3UCubed/UNH/Sanjeev Mehta