Irvine CubeSat STEM Program (ICSP) is a joint educational endeavor to teach, train and inspire the next generation of STEM professionals. ICSP involves students from six high schools from Irvine, California, and its main objective is to assemble, test, and launch a CubeSat into low Earth orbit.
ICSP's initial concepts were conceived by Brent Freeze when he was working with Arnold O. Beckman High School physics teacher Paul Lewanski on a weather balloon project; Freeze later founded the program with Kain Sosa.
The Irvine CubeSat STEM Program was shut down in the 2022 school year. The Irvine Public School Foundation (IPSF) reallocated the CubeSat funding elsewhere and Brent Freeze has left the project to pursue other endeavors. This change could have resulted from the lack of productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of talented students. It is rumored that the program could return during the 2023 school year.[ citation needed ]
The Irvine CubeSat STEM Program was created in 2015 by Brent Freeze and Kain Sosa. Freeze took inspiration from his work alongside Arnold O. Beckman High School physics teacher Paul Lewanski on a weather balloon project. [1]
Two years after the weather balloon project, Freeze contacted Lewanski about the idea of a CubeSat program. Beckman High School supported the program fully, and became the first ICSP team, Beckman Avionics. Following Beckman High School, Freeze and Sosa interviewed teachers at other high schools in Irvine, and the other subteams were created based on each schools' resources and teacher skill sets.
The Irvine CubeSat STEM Program aims to inspire the next generation of innovative thinkers, creators, programmers, and explorers. [2] ICSP is composed of six public high schools from the Tustin [3] and Irvine [4] School Districts: Arnold O. Beckman High School; [5] Irvine High School; [6] Northwood High School (Irvine, California); [7] Portola High School; [8] University High School (Irvine, California); [9] and Woodbridge High School (Irvine, California). [10] Each school is given a specific role for the CubeSat missions, such as communications, propulsion, or power.
High school | Lead for team: |
Arnold O. Beckman High School | Avionics Archived 2017-11-15 at the Wayback Machine |
Irvine High School | Propulsion |
Northwood High School | Power |
Portola High School | BioTech |
University High School | Prime |
Woodbridge High School | Communications |
Team members for the program's inaugural mission, IRVINE01, were selected in 2016. [11] Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems provided engineering support and served as ICSP's integration partner. [12] The Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency also provided support as well as the deployable solar arrays, the batteries and the radiation shielding panels. [13] [14]
ICSP's first nano-satellite, IRVINE01, was launched on November 10, 2018, on a Rocket Lab Electron entitled "It's Business Time". ICSP's second nanosatellite, IRVINE02, was launched on December 3, 2018, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 as part of the Spaceflight Industries' rideshare mission, SSO-A Smallsat Express. [15] The high schools have already begun work on their next CubeSat: IRVINE03.
In addition to building CubeSats, ICSP educates hosts a guest speaker series with expert insight into space and technology. To date, guest speakers included Jordi Puig-Suari (co-inventor of the CubeSat standard), Commander Ronnie Nader [16] (from the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency), Michael Minovitch (gravity assist maneuver), NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino, and Pamela Clark (Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory CubeSat Development Lab [17] ).
The Irvine Public School Foundation (IPSF) is a sponsor of ICSP, providing over $150,000 in funding annually with the support of corporate sponsors: FivePoint, Ingersoll-Rand/Trane, Google, Cisco Systems, Resilient, Microsemi, and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation . [18] [19]
IRVINE01 is an educational 1U CubeSat mission that gives high school students the experience of building, testing, and controlling a nano-satellite to develop interest and talent in the science and engineering fields. [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] The mission features a camera, which will be used to take pictures of nearby celestial objects, as well as the first in orbital ion electrospray thruster developed by Accion Systems. Other technology aboard include deployable solar arrays and magnetorquers, both supplied by the Ecuadorian Space Agency.
IRVINE01 was launched from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on November 11, 2018, as part of an Electron rocket mission operated by Rocket Lab entitled It's Business Time. [25] [26]
IRVINE01 reentered the atmosphere on February 3, 2023. [27]
ICSP's second and third CubeSats have been selected by NASA to participate in NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa). [28] [29] IRVINE02 features an ion electrospray thruster, the second of Accion Systems thrusters to reach orbit. Beyond the thruster, IRVINE02 utilizes magnetorquers, deployable solar arrays, a GPS unit, and a laser to transmit pictures and data back to Earth. [30] It is one of the smallest CubeSats with an onboard electric propulsion system.
IRVINE02 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on December 3, 2018, as part of NASA's ELaNa educational program [31] aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 alongside 64 other spacecraft on the mission SSO-A: Smallsat Express. [32]
On March 2, 2018, NASA selected IRVINE03 [33] to take part in NASA's ninth round of NASA CubeSat candidates. [34] IRVINE03 will include a technology demonstration of an X-ray Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) sensor and electrospray thrusters. IRVINE 03 was expected to launch in mid 2020, but the launch was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The launch is further delayed due to leadership problems.
A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of 10 cm (3.9 in) cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than 2 kg (4.4 lb) per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats are deployed into orbit from the International Space Station, or launched as secondary payloads on a launch vehicle. As of December 2023, more than 2,300 CubeSats have been launched.
Interorbital Systems (IOS) is an American company based in Mojave, California, that specializes in the manufacturing of rockets and satellites. It was established in 1996 by Roderick and Randa Milliron. As of October 2023, the company is in development stage for three orbital launch vehicles: NEPTUNE, TRITON, and TRITON HEAVY.
Explorer-1 [Prime], also known as E1P and Electra, was a CubeSat-class picosatellite built by the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL) at Montana State University. It was launched aboard a Taurus-XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on 4 March 2011, but failed to achieve orbit after the rocket malfunctioned.
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is a NASA environmental monitoring satellite that measures soil moisture across the planet. It is designed to collect a global 'snapshot' of soil moisture every 2 to 3 days. With this frequency, changes from specific storms can be measured while also assessing impacts across seasons of the year. SMAP was launched on 31 January 2015. It was one of the first Earth observation satellites developed by NASA in response to the National Research Council's Decadal Survey.
Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) is the first National Science Foundation sponsored CubeSat mission. The RAX mission is a joint effort between SRI International in Menlo Park, California and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The chief scientist at SRI International, Dr. Hasan Bahcivan, led his team at SRI to develop the payload while the chief engineer, Dr. James Cutler, led a team of students to develop the satellite bus in the Michigan Exploration Laboratory. There are currently two satellites in the RAX mission.
NEE-01 Pegaso is an Ecuadorian technology demonstration satellite, and Ecuador's first satellite launched to space. Built by the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency (EXA), it is a nanosatellite of the single-unit CubeSat class. The spacecraft's instruments include a dual visible and infrared camera which allows the spacecraft to take pictures and transmit live video from space.
Busek Company Incorporated is an American spacecraft propulsion company that builds thrusters, electronics, and various systems for spacecraft.
SkySat is a constellation of sub-meter resolution Earth observation satellites owned by Planet Labs, providing imagery, high-definition video and analytics services. Planet acquired the satellites with their purchase of Terra Bella, a Mountain View, California-based company founded in 2009 by Dan Berkenstock, Julian Mann, John Fenwick, and Ching-Yu Hu, from Google in 2017.
Nanoracks LLC is a private in-space services company which builds space hardware and in-space repurposing tools. The company also facilitates experiments and launches of CubeSats to Low Earth Orbit.
PhoneSat is an ongoing NASA project of building nanosatellites using unmodified consumer-grade off-the-shelf smartphones and Arduino platform and launching them into Low Earth Orbit. This project is part of NASA's Small Spacecraft Technology Program and was started in 2009 at NASA Ames Research Center.
Planet Labs PBC is a publicly trading American Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends.
Lunar IceCube is a NASA nanosatellite orbiter mission that was intended to prospect, locate, and estimate amount and composition of water ice deposits on the Moon for future exploitation. It was launched as a secondary payload mission on Artemis 1, the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), on 16 November 2022. As of February 2023 it is unknown whether NASA team has contact with satellite or not.
ArgoMoon is a CubeSat that was launched into a heliocentric orbit on Artemis 1, the maiden flight of the Space Launch System, on 16 November 2022 at 06:47:44 UTC. The objective of the ArgoMoon spacecraft is to take detailed images of the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage following Orion separation, an operation that will demonstrate the ability of a cubesat to conduct precise proximity maneuvers in deep space. ASI has not confirmed nor denied whether this took place, but several images of the Earth and the Moon were taken.
CubeSail is a low-cost spacecraft propulsion demonstration mission using two identical 1.5U CubeSat satellites to deploy a 260 m (850 ft) long, 20 m2 (220 sq ft) solar sail ribbon between them. This mission is a first in a series of increasingly complex demonstrations leading up to a full-scale UltraSail heliogyro by the University of Illinois and CU Aerospace.
CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment (Q-PACE) or Cu-PACE, was an orbital spacecraft mission that would have studied the early stages of proto-planetary accretion by observing particle dynamical aggregation for several years.
NASA's Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator (PTD) Project is a series of tech demonstrations of technologies aboard a series of nanosatellites known as CubeSats, providing significant enhancements to the performance of these versatile spacecraft. Each of the five planned PTD missions consist of a 6-unit (6U) CubeSat with expandable solar arrays.
Simulation-to-Flight 1 (STF-1) is a microsatellite built by the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility (IV&V) in Fairmont, West Virginia with the collaboration of the West Virginia Space Grants Consortium and West Virginia University.
CAPSTONE is a lunar orbiter that is testing and verifying the calculated orbital stability planned for the Lunar Gateway space station. The spacecraft is a 12-unit CubeSat that is also testing a navigation system that is measuring its position relative to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) without relying on ground stations. It was launched on 28 June 2022, arrived in lunar orbit on 14 November 2022, and was scheduled to orbit for six months. On 18 May 2023, it completed its primary mission to orbit in the near-rectilinear halo orbit for six months, but will stay on this orbit, continuing to perform experiments during an enhanced mission phase.
HuskySat-1 is an artificial satellite designed at the University of Washington. It was launched by Cygnus NG-12 from Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Launch Pad 0 on Wallops Island, Virginia to low earth orbit on November 2, 2019. It is a CubeSat, and will demonstrate onboard plasma propulsion and high gain telemetry for low Earth orbit that would be a precursor for an attempt at a larger CubeSat designed for orbital insertion at the Moon.