1. Kentucky Space Enterprise Missions
Jason Bratcher1, Marc Beck2, Twyman Clements1, Jessamyn Delgado2, Daniel Erb1, Anthony Karam1, Prasanna Padmanabhan1,
Samir Rawashdeh1, Nate Rhodes1, Mike Schulte4, Jason Smathers2, Venkateswara Nandanavanam3, Ben Malphrus2, James E. Lumpp, Jr. 1
1. University of Kentucky, 2. Morehead State University, 3. Western Kentucky University, 4. Kentucky Community and Technical College System
ABSTRACT
GARVEY P-12A
BALLOON-1 MISSION
Kentucky Space has flown a series of near space and sub-orbital missions to enhance the teams efforts in CubeSat design and development. These missions provide excellent training opportunities and flight experience for students aw well as test platforms for technology used in CubeSat development.
Garvey Spacecraft corporation, working with students at the University of California State Long Beach, developed the Garvey Prospector 12A sub-orbital rocket. Kentucky Space developed a strap-down IMU for the mission which logged flight performance data on a non-volatile flash memory. P-12A was launched on October 11, 2008 from Mojave Desert in California. Post processing of the data produced detailed flight performance data and trajectory information for the flight. The mission was an excellent opportunity for Kentucky Space students to improve processes for designing, building, testing, and delivering payloads for integration and analyzing post-flight data.
SPACE EXPRESS
Kentucky Space Space Express was a sub-orbital access to space experiment launched in December 2007 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The Space Express mission was designed to help test subsystems and processes being developed for future KySat orbital missions. The Space Express launch vehicle was a Lunar Rocket and Rover Shadow 1B (Super-Loki solid rocket and passive dart). The Space Express payload consisted of a custom payload carrier and telemetry package that reported temperature, pressure, and acceleration data in real-time. The telemetry was received by redundant amateur band VHF ground stations. The mission provided an excellent learning opportunity for the students involved and tested several hardware and software subsystems being used for the KySat-1 CubeSat.
The Kentucky Space team launched Balloon-1 from Warren County Airport in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Monday 14 July, Above 98% of the atmosphere at its highest altitude (27821 m, ft), the flight hardware logged pressure, temperature, and data on the magnetic field of the Earth. The team also worked with the Kentucky National Guard to track the balloon and evaluate the use of such high-altitude platforms for emergency communication support. GPS APRS data was used to track the balloon and chash operations were supported by a simplex voice repeater on the flight string. Two 7.1-megapixel Canon digital cameras (one side-looking, one down-looking) captured 894 high-resolution photos showing the curvature of the Earth and of the blackness of space.
KySat-1
Hardware Overview
KySat-1 is a 1 kilogram picoclass satellite being developed by college students across the state of Kentucky. While the primary mission of KySat-1 is educational outreach, the goals of the KySat program include 1) Educational hands-on experience for secondary and post-secondary students 2) Focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math development 3) Design a reliable reusable satellite bus that will form the basis for future education and commercial Kentucky Space missions 4) Develop an infrastructure for the purpose of testing and building small spacecraft. The timeline for KySat-1 is aggressive and off-the-shelf technology is leveraged whenever possible without sacrificing the overall integrity of the system.
SOCEM
Sub-Orbital CubeSat Experimental Mission (SOCEM) is a collaboration between Kentucky Space, the NASA Wallops Flight Facility Sounding Rockets Program and California Polytechnic University to experiment with the ejection of CubeSats from the Wallops 17” diameter sounding rocket form-factor.
Control Flow Diagram