The satellites, built by students as part of CalPoly and Stanford universities’ CubeSat program, are launched as secondary payloads on a NASA or private rocket for research purposes. They must be four inches on each side, weigh less than three pounds and have a volume of about a quart.
Marquette’s CubeSat, Golden Eagle One, will be the first satellite built by Wisconsin college students to be launched into space. It will be used to collect and transmit photos from onboard cameras back to earth and test the reliability of special computer memory used in space.
Back at Marquette, students will use a ground station to communicate with the solar-powered satellite in orbit. It will undergo a group of NASA tests before a launch date is set.
“The College of Engineering wants to inspire students to reach for places they normally wouldn’t reach for, including space,” said Dr. Robert H. Bishop, Opus Dean of Engineering and adviser on the project. “This project is an opportunity for our students who are driven to explore.”
This is the fifth round of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. So far, 115 other satellites have been selected.