CatSat is atechnology demonstration of an inflatable antenna for high-speed communications.  The “Ah-ha” moment for the antenna technology came to the CatSat principal investigator when Chris Walker took a pause while making chocolate pudding and covered the pot with plastic wrap. Later he noticed an image of an overhanging light bulb was being created by reflections off the concave plastic wrap which had been pulled in by the cooling of air in the pot.

This observation eventually led to the Large Balloon Reflector, an inflatable technology  that creates large collecting  apertures that weigh a fraction of today’s deployable antennas. CatSat’s deployable antenna consists of a Mylar balloon. The front half of the balloon is transparent, allowing microwaves to pass through. The back half of the balloon is aluminized, creating a reflecting antenna.

After reaching low Earth orbit, CatSat’s antenna will deploy and inflate to a diameter of just over one-and-a-half feet CatSat’s demonstration will be to transmit high-definition Earth photos to X-band ground stations at ~50 megabits per sec, more than ~5 times faster than typical home internet speeds. In addition to images, data about the structure of the Earth’s ionosphere will be gathered by listening-in to thousands of beacons from ground-based ham radio stations.

CatSat is a student-run project  involving NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, Freefall Aerospace, the University of Arizona, and Rincon Research Corporation in Tucson, Arizona.

The main payload on KUbeSat-1 is the Primary Cosmic Ray Detector which will use a new method to measure the energy and species of primary cosmic rays hitting the Earth. This type of research is traditionally done on Earth.

The secondary payload is the High-Altitude Calibration, (HiCalK) that builds on decades of research surrounding Very High Frequency  signals generated by cosmic ray interactions with the atmosphere. HiCalK is a demonstrator mission to pave the way for a more advanced version of future KUbeSat satellites. A camera on board KUbeSate-1 aims to spread awareness of the accessibility of space and inspire young minds to truly reach for the stars. KUbeSat-1 is the first CubeSat to fly from Kansas under NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. The mission revives small satellite research at the University of Kansas and starts a new program called KUbeSat that will offer space access to any student research in the region.

MESAT1 involves three missions in one, all designed by high school students in Maine. The science payloads are climate focused and include ALBEDO, IMAGER, and HAB. These will identify urban heat islands, determine concentration of phytoplankton in water bodies, and help predict harmful algal blooms. Four multispectral cameras on board will relay the data down to University of Maine’s ground station for further processing. The University of Maine engineering team collaborated with the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation and National Estuarine Research Reserve System to build the 3U satellite with support from the Maine Space Grant Consortium. MESAT1 will be Maine’s first small satellite to launch under NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.

R5-S4 and R5-S2 will be the first in a line of R5 spacecrafts launched to orbit that will be tests of a new, lean process for building a spacecraft bus. The team will monitor how each part of the spacecraft performs, including the computer, software, radio, propulsion system, sensors, and cameras. Both spacecraft feature Rendezvous and Proximity Operations Fiducial AprilTags from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland that works to solve the problem of relative navigation between spacecraft.

R5-S4 is also hosting ELROI-SOTU (Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier – Space Object Tracking Unit), a “spacecraft license plate” developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A small blinking light continuously flashes out a license plate number that can be read with a small telescope on the ground to identify this satellite among the tens of thousands of objects currently in orbit. The ELROI system is designed to help solve the increasing congestion and confusion in the space environment as more satellites are launched at an ever-faster pace.

R5-S4 and R5-S2 will be the first in a line of R5 spacecrafts launched to orbit that will be tests of a new, lean process for building a spacecraft bus. The team will monitor how each part of the spacecraft performs, including the computer, software, radio, propulsion system, sensors, and cameras. Both spacecraft feature Rendezvous and Proximity Operations Fiducial AprilTags from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland that works to solve the problem of relative navigation between spacecraft.

Teachers in Space is launching a third Serenity class satellite after the successful launch of “TIS Serenity” in October 2022. Serenity 3 offers low-cost opportunities to test educational experiments in space. It has a suite of data sensors and a camera that will send data back to Earth. Licensed as an amateur radio broadcaster, Serenity can communicate with radios on the ground allowing anyone with a ham radio to “talk” to Serenity. A person can collect data and pictures as they are transmitted back to Earth.

Visit www.TIS.org/Serenity-satellite for details on communicating with and requesting photos from Serenity.  Teachers in Space, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization in North America that stimulates student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). They provide teachers with real space science experiences, space flight opportunities, and industry connections.

Satellite for Optimal Control and Imaging (SOC-i) is a technology demonstration mission of attitude control technology, or how a spacecraft maintains its orientation in relation to the Earth, Sun, or other body. One of the payloads is a guidance and control system called SOAR, or SOC-i’s Optimal Attitude Reorientation. The second payload, CMOS, is a camera that serves as an instrument to demonstrate SOC-i’s pointing abilities. A challenge of spaceflight is maintaining autonomous flight under multiple constraints, for example, keeping stability while avoiding pointing sensitive instruments directly into the Sun. This mission will test an algorithm aimed at supporting autonomous operations with constrained attitude guidance maneuvers computed in real-time aboard the spacecraft.

SOAR uses optimization-based attitude guidance methods developed at the University of Washington to compute trajectories in real-time that meet a set of five constraints throughout the maneuvers.

The TES-11 is a 6U CubeSat that is part of the TechEdSat, a series of collaborative projects and missions that pairs college and university students with NASA researchers to evaluate new technologies for use in small satellites, or CubeSats. Students do the hands-on work – designing, building, and testing CubeSat spacecraft systems and analyzing the results – for each flight mission, under mentorship of engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

TES-11 contains several technology demonstrations, including advanced communications, radiation sensor suite, experimental solar panels, an exo-brake, and BrainStack-3. The advanced communication experiment involves the User Initiative Service protocol which will allow the nano-sat to autonomously ‘negotiate’ with ground stations, and later download data.

The BrainStack is a continuing series which uses a kind of graphics processing unit and neuromorphic processors to allow for Artificial Intelligence, or machine learning experiment, in low Earth orbit. The exo-brake is a deployable parachute-like device aimed at reducing the time the CubeSat will de-orbit.