The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is a research organization at the University of Colorado Boulder. LASP is a research institute with over one hundred research scientists ranging in fields from solar influences, to Earth's and other planetary atmospherics processes, space weather, space plasma and dusty plasma physics. LASP has advanced technical capabilities specializing in designing, building, and operating spacecraft and spacecraft instruments.
A CubeSat is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that is made up of multiples of 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm cubic units. CubeSats have a mass of no more than 1.33 kilograms (2.9 lb) per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats are commonly put in orbit by deployers on the International Space Station, or launched as secondary payloads on a launch vehicle. Over 1000 CubeSats have been launched as of January 2019. Over 900 have been successfully deployed in orbit and over 80 have been destroyed in launch failures.
Orbital Sciences Corporation was an American company specializing in the design, manufacture and launch of small- and medium- class space and rocket systems for commercial, military and other government customers. In 2014 Orbital merged with Alliant Techsystems to create a new company called Orbital ATK, Inc..
High-altitude balloons are manned or unmanned balloons, usually filled with helium or hydrogen and rarely methane, that are released into the stratosphere, generally attaining between 18 and 37 km above sea level. In 2002, a balloon named BU60-1 reached an altitude of 53.0 km.
Milstar is a constellation of military communications satellites in geostationary orbit, which are operated by the United States Air Force, and provide secure and jam-resistant worldwide communications to meet the requirements of the Armed Forces of the United States. Six spacecraft were launched between 1994 and 2003, of which five are operational; the third launch failed, both damaging the satellite and leaving it in an unusable orbit.
Micro-Space was an aerospace corporation based in Denver, Colorado, founded in February 1977 by Richard P. Speck under the name Spectron Instrument Corporation. The corporation changed its name to "Micro-Space, Inc." in 1998. It was dissolved in 2011, following the death of the founder.
The Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR) is a launch facility and rocket range for sounding rockets in the U.S. state of Alaska. The world's largest land-based rocket range, it is on a 5,132-acre (20.77 km2) site about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Fairbanks and 1.5 degrees south of the Arctic Circle. More than 1,700 launches have been conducted at the range to study the Earth's atmosphere and the interaction between the atmosphere and the space environment. Areas studied at PFRR include the aurora, plasma physics, the ozone layer, solar proton events, Earth's magnetic field, and ultraviolet radiation. Rockets launched at PFRR have attained an apogee of 930 miles (1,500 km).
Air launch to orbit is the method of launching rockets at altitude from a conventional horizontal-takeoff
aircraft, to carry satellites to low Earth orbit. It is a follow-on development of air launches of experimental aircraft that began in the late 1940s. This method, when employed for orbital payload insertion, presents significant advantages over conventional vertical rocket launches, particularly because of the reduced mass, thrust and cost of the rocket.
Kentucky Space is a non-profit consortium of private and public universities, companies, and other organizations with the goal of designing and leading innovative space missions within realistic budgets and objectives. The enterprise is supported by the Kentucky Space Grant Consortium and developed out of the programs of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation.
Rocket Lab is a private American aerospace manufacturer and smallsat launcher with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. It has developed a suborbital sounding rocket named Ātea and currently operates a lightweight orbital rocket known as Electron, which provides dedicated launches for smallsats and CubeSats.
Shin'en, known before launch as UNITEC-1 or UNISEC Technology Experiment Carrier 1, is a Japanese student spacecraft which was intended to make a flyby of Venus in order to study the effects of interplanetary spaceflight on spacecraft computers. In doing so, it was intended to become the first student-built spacecraft to operate beyond geocentric orbit. It was operated by UNISEC, a collaboration between several Japanese universities.
Hermes was an American satellite which was to have been operated by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. Intended to perform technology demonstration experiments in low Earth orbit, it was lost during launch in March 2011 when the rocket that was carrying it failed to achieve orbit.
Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment (CSSWE) was the sixth National Science Foundation sponsored CubeSat mission. It was built by students at the University of Colorado at Boulder with advising from professionals at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. The CSSWE mission was a joint effort by the University of Colorado's Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. The mission principal investigator was Profs. Xinlin Li, and the Co-PIs are Prof. Scott Palo and Dr. Shri Kanekal. The project manager for the project was Dr. Lauren Blum, the system engineer was Dr. David Gerhardt, and the instrument scientist was Dr. Quintin Schiller.
Exploration Mission-1 or EM-1 is the uncrewed first planned flight of the Space Launch System and the second flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. The launch is planned for June 2020 from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. The Orion spacecraft will spend approximately 3 weeks in space, including 6 days in a retrograde orbit around the Moon. It is planned to be followed by Exploration Mission-2 in 2022.
Heweliusz is the second Polish scientific satellite launched in 2014 as part of the Bright-star Target Explorer (BRITE) programme. The spacecraft was launched aboard a Chang Zheng 4B rocket in August 2014. Heweliusz is an optical astronomy spacecraft built by the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences and operated by Centrum Astronomiczne im. Mikołaja Kopernika PAN; it is one of two Polish contributions to the BRITE constellation along with the Lem satellite. It is named after Johannes Hevelius.
The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) CubeSat was the first launched National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Mission Directorate CubeSat with a science mission. It was designed, built, and operated primarily by students at the University of Colorado Boulder with professional mentorship and involvement from professors, scientists, and engineers in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences department and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, as well as Southwest Research Institute, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory. The mission principal investigator is Dr. Thomas N. Woods and co-investigators are Dr. Amir Caspi, Dr. Phil Chamberlin, Dr. Andrew Jones, Rick Kohnert, Professor Xinlin Li, Professor Scott Palo, and Dr. Stanley Solomon. The student lead was Dr. James Paul Mason, who has since become a Co-I for the second flight model of MinXSS.
PSLV-C37 was the 39th mission of the Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) program and its 16th mission in the XL configuration. PSLV-C37 successfully carried and deployed a record 104 satellites in sun-synchronous orbits. Launched on 15 February 2017 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, it broke the earlier record of launching 37 satellites by a Russian Dnepr rocket on 19 June 2014. According to ISRO, the 101 international satellites were launched as part of a commercial arrangement between several firms and its commercial arm Antrix Corporation Limited, run under the auspices of the Indian Government's Department of Space.
OMOTENASHI is a small spacecraft and semi-hard lander of the 6U CubeSat format that will demonstrate low-cost technology to land and explore the lunar surface. The CubeSat will also take measurements of the radiation environment near the Moon as well as on the lunar surface. Omotenashi is a Japanese word for "welcome" or "hospitality".
