USU Get Away Special CubeSat now in Earth orbit

Mission accomplished, history made: A clearer image of the satellite's aeroboom, successfully inflated in space. The novel boom, tightly packed into the satellite for launch, provides navigational stability and is a model for future satellite design. Photo courtesy of Utah State University.

LOGAN – When Utah State University’s Get Away Special Team CubeSat successfully deployed from the International Space Station on Jan. 26, it was the highlight of a 10-year project.

But with still a year ahead orbiting the earth, there is more to be told.

The CubeSat is Utah’s first solely undergraduate-built satellite successfully launched to space and one of the first in the nation. Jack Danos is the student coordinator of the project.

“There are a lot of other teams out there that have undergraduates on the team, they have a lot of students,” Danos said. “But in the end, it’s the professor’s project; they have a lot of faculty help or industry support.

“But for us it was 100% the students who led this, made all the design decisions, built the whole thing, all of the testing. Which was really cool, but really hard to do because we had no idea what we were doing.”

Danos said the project was originally a technology demonstration, attempting to deploy a novel inflatable boom designed to keep the 4-inch-cube satellite on track, then to also gather data.

“Right now, the satellite has completed all of its mission objectives,” Danos added. “It’s primary mission objective was getting down that picture and in the secondary mission objective was getting down data to determine how this inflatable boom is stabilizing the satellite.

“So, what we’re doing now is we’re currently trying to download a high resolution picture from the satellite. We’ve got a pretty good picture, but it’s relatively low resolution.”

Danos said about half of launched CubeSats are never heard from again.

Aggies in Space: USU’s Get Away Special Satellite Deployed From the International Space Station

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