What on Earth Is NASA Doing with 29 New Satellites

At a quarter past eight, November 19, NASA set a new launch record: 29 satellites fired into space, all in one go. In addition to being record-setting, the payload was incredibly diverse, comprising satellites from the usual sources—NASA and the military—and orbital newcomers, including the first satellite built by high school students. Their names even run the spectrum from the dryly technical to the charmingly idiosyncratic, like University of Hawaii's Ho’oponopono, named for an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation.

The group launch was on an Orbital Sciences Minotaur 1 Space Launch Vehicle. Standing nearly 63 feet tall, the rocket falls under Air Force management and boasts a technological combination of decommissioned ICBM motors, commercial boosters, and state of the art technology to boost almost 1,279 pounds into low Earth orbit. Launch facilities for the Minotaur 1 exist at various launch sites, but last night’s rocket launched from the facilities at NASA’s Wallops Island in Virginia. The mission, called ORS-3, is a military one; the main payload is the military satellite, the STPSat-3. Built by Ball Aerospace, STPSat is a standard interface platform for the Air Force’s Space and Missiles System Center, Space Development and Test Directorate.

But on this mission the STPSat-3 supports six distinct payloads, five of which are experiments: a US Air Force Academy-built payload designed to measure plasma densities and energies called the Integrated Miniaturized Electrostatic Analyzer Reflight; an Air Force Research Laboratory and Army Space and Missile Defense Command phenomenology payload called Joint Component Research; the Strip Sensor Unit that is a risk-reduction orbital experiment; the Small Wind and Temperature Spectrometer comes from the Navy Research Laboratory and is designed to characterize the Earth's ionosphere and thermosphere; and the NASA/NOAA joint experiment to collect precise measurements of solar irradiance called the TSI Calibration Transfer Experiment. The sixth payload aboard STPSat-3 is the MMA Design LLC De-Orbit Module that will accelerate the de-orbit phase of the satellite to well under 25 years.

Joining this military satellite is a series of scientific cubesats, smaller, less expensive satellites that some view as space exploration's future. This payload is a big step towards seeing just how practical they are.

Some cubesats are designed to study just how useful these kinds of small-scale technologies might be for future missions. SENSE SV 1 and 2, provided by SMC-XR, will assess nanosat utility for space weather characterization, GPS radio occultation, and levels of ion, neutral, and UV nightglow. Prometheus, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, will evaluate low-cost development operations and operational utility of cubesat technology.

Other payloads are designed to demonstrate different kinds of technology that might come into play on future missions. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab’s ORS Tech 1 satellite is a demonstration of multi-mission bus architecture. NPS-SCAT, from NASA LSP and the Naval Post Graduate School is a test bed for measuring how solar cells degrade over time in space. NASA’s own PhoneSat 2.4 is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of cheap COTS hardware to lower overall launch hardware costs. DragonSat-1, from Drexel University, is an experiment to test the deployment of a gravity gradient boom. Trailblazer, from the University of New Mexico, is a proof-of-concept mission for "Space Plug-and-Play," demonstrating that various commercial parts can fit into one basic satellite architecture.

Other cubesats are focusing on how small technologies will help scientists explore the space environment. KySat-2 builds on lessons its builder, the Kentucky Space Consortium, learned with KySat-1, which was supposed to study the small particles in our atmosphere but failed to reach orbit in 2011. Horus, built by the National Reconnaissance Office, will assess the performance of space-based telescopes for watching space debris. Ho’oponopono, as mentioned above, is from the University of Hawaii and will demonstrate cubesats’ ability to provide orbital radar calibration capabilities to the Air Force for radar interrogations and deal with ephemeris data.

A handful of last night’s launch payload have more immediately practical scientific aims. ORSES, provided by the Space Missiles Defense Center will provide communications for underserved tactical users. The National Reconnaissance and NASA Goddard’s joint payload called Firefly is dedicated to studying the atmospheric effects of lightning. The University of Alabama-Huntsville’s ChargerSat-1 will improve communications and demonstrate increased stability for future picosatellites. Vermont Technical College’s Vermont Lunar CubeSat is a test of a navigation system using NASA Goddard’s GPS Enhanced Onboard Navigation System. Copper, a St. Louis University cubesat, will use commercial off-the-shelf infrared imaging hardware to study orbit characterization of space systems and Earth observation. The University of Florida’s SwampSat will demonstrate rapid retargeting and precision maneuvering using a miniaturized control moment gyroscope. AFSS Non-Separating Tertiary is an ATK-based satellites designed to demonstrate Autonomous Flight Safety Systems that use onboard tracking and processing to terminate a failed launch.

Other cubesats include West Point Academy’s first cadet-built satellite called Black Night-1, the University of Louisiana-Lafayette’s CAPE-2, a proof-of-concept of satellite designed to teach local schools about space science. TJ3Sat, built by Thomas Jefferson High School, is designed to provide resources for research in space education; the satellite itself will also substantiate education resources across a variety of countries.

Finally, there’s the SoM/DoM Non-Separating Tertiary, a modular, scalable deorbit module that will send the STPSat-3 and the Minotaur 1 launch vehicle back to Earth at the end of their active lifetimes.

This small army of cubesats promises to return a pretty impressive wealth of science and engineering data, all from a single launch.