THINSATS Will ThinSats When Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket blasts off from Wallops Island, Virginia, next fall on its way to the International inspire the next Space Station, the rocket’s second stage will carry an unusual payload: one cubesat and 63 ThinSats, miniature satellites shaped like a slice of bread. generation of For a year, the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, Twiggs Space Lab, Orbital ATK and NASA’s Wallops Flight engineers and Facility have been collaborating on a campaign to encourage Virginia students to design, build and test Thinsats, which are a seventh the size of cubesats. scientists? Now that cubesats have graduated from college, so to speak, ThinSats have come along as an affordable project for The biggest thing since sliced college, high school and middle school bread might just be a satellite the students. With time, ThinSat inventor Hank Voss thinks they will shake off the size of a slice of bread “just a toy” stigma early cubesat propo- nents know so well. “To me, this is absolutely the most exciting thing in this whole satellite business,” said Bob Twiggs, co-inventor of the cubesat and co-founder of Twiggs Space Lab of Morehead, Kentucky. “Can you imagine what students are going to do with these satellites?”

PocketQubes For years, Twiggs, a passionate advocate for science, technology, engineering and math education, has been promot- ing satellites that are easier to build and less expensive to launch than cubesats, including the PocketQube, a satellite that measures five centimeters on each side. PocketQubes never caught on the way cubesats did, though. They are tricky to build because students have to connect multiple layers of printed circuit boards. Plus, there’s little room for exterior solar arrays and PocketQubes don’t work well LAB with traditional cubesat deployers, said SPACE

DEBRA WERNER TWIGGS

12 | SPACENEWS 10.23.17 Students at Coeburn Middle School in southwestern Virginia work on their ThinSat kits.

Walter Holemans, founder and chief from the time we were at the Small by 114 by 12.5 millimeters. Pins used to engineer of Planetary Systems Corp, the Satellite Conference, we were at Orbital separate them bring the total width of Silver Spring, Maryland, company man- ATK in Dulles, Virginia, and they had each ThinSat to 17.4 millimeters. ufacturing ThinSat dispensers. PocketQubes on the manifest,” Twiggs It was “one super idea,” Twiggs said. The problem came to a head in 2016 said. “That’s a record.” ThinSats are built in a single layer, after Twiggs ran into Warren Frick, Or- To figure out how to launch Pock- meaning one printed circuit board that bital ATK’s advanced projects manager, at etQubes, Twiggs turned to his friend is easy to design, assemble and test. At- the Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Voss, a retired engineering and physics mospheric drag in extremely low Earth Utah, and asked to launch PocketQubes professor at Indiana’s Taylor University orbit where the Antares second stage from the Antares rocket’s second stage. and NearSpace Launch (NSL) president, drops them off will orient them with the As it turned out, Orbital ATK already chief executive and chief scientist. thin side forward. Best of all, 21 ThinSats had an agreement with Virginia Space After wrestling with the problem for fit in Planetary Systems Corp.’s Canis-

AUTHORITY to set aside room for 12 cubesats on more than a month, Voss proposed a terized Satellite Dispenser without any the International Space Station cargo new solution. “What if you think of a extra packaging, Holemans said. FLIGHT resupply flight scheduled for fall 2018. three-unit cubesat like a loaf of bread “Besides, a satellite that looks like a

SPACE Within weeks, Orbital ATK and Virginia and slice it up like a loaf of bread,” he told piece of bread is cool,” Twiggs said. Space agreed to replace the cubesats Twiggs. “Instead of making little boxes, with PocketQubes. let’s make 4.5-inch by 4.5-inch by 3/4- ThinSats in the Classroom COMMERCIAL “The fastest thing that has ever hap- inch satellites and call them ThinSats.” Twiggs Space Lab has developed a three-

VIRGINIA pened in the space industry is one month To be precise, ThinSats measure 111 phase curriculum to lead students

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through the process of designing, developing, testing and operating Thin- Sats in addition to collecting, analyzing and presenting data they acquire with onboard sensors. In the first phase of the ThinSat cur- riculum, students will experiment with plug-and-play sensor chips developed by XinaBox Inc. of Delaware, that are easy to program and connect without soldering. Then, students will build Flat- Sats, satellites on printed circuit boards to test on low-altitude balloons. In the program’s second phase, stu- dents will design payloads to integrate in ThinSat engineering models that NSL of Upland, Indiana, will send to an alti- tude of 36 kilometers on high-altitude Dale Nash, executive director of Virginia Space and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (center) and balloons. Finally, students will use data Alta Devices, Twiggs Space Lab and Near Space Launch colleagues hold three interlinked ThinSats. from their initial experiments to develop the ThinSat payloads Antares will launch the ThinSat curriculum. In Virginia, which To Virginia and Beyond into 200-250-kilometer orbits. is the focus of the ThinSat educational Everyone involved in the ThinSat program At that altitude, ThinSats will spend campaign, the University of Virginia, is extraordinarily enthusiastic about its roughly five days in orbit before reen- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State potential to engage students long before tering the atmosphere, which Twiggs University, the College of William and they are ready to build cubesats. Virginia said perfectly matches the attention Mary, and Old Dominion University are Space, which owns and operates the span of students. collaborating with nearby middle and Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wal- Another benefit to the low altitude and high schools. lops Island, agreed to fund the entire first speedy reentry is that “they can’t get on “It’s a great opportunity for universities run of the program and to help schools our case for creating debris,” Twiggs said, to interact with students in their area and pay for future missions. a concern that nagged at PocketQubes, obviously, younger students will bene- “I’d like the opportunity to touch every which critics said were difficult to track fit from the experience of the graduate corner of Virginia and beyond,” said Dale with ground-based radar. and undergraduate students,” said Matt Nash, executive director of Virginia Space ThinSats will travel in a region of the Craft, Twiggs Space Lab co-founder and and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. atmosphere that is important to climate business development vice president. The manifest for the first ThinSat mis- and weather forecasts, but rarely studied sion is “full to capacity,” said Brian Crane, because atmospheric drag makes it hard Virginia Space ThinSat lead. Virginia to keep satellites there, Voss said. Students An illustration showing Space and Twiggs Space Lab are signing will outfit ThinSats with sensors and min- 21 ThinSats that will be up schools for future flights. separated after being iature Globalstar radios supplied by NSL ejected from a In preparation for the first mission, to stream data continuously through the Cannisterized Satellite Twiggs Space Lab is setting up an online Globalstar constellation to the internet. Dispenser. Space Data Dashboard, complete with With internet streaming, students instruction and videos on satellite manu- will get more data in five days than they facturing, environmental testing, satellite would in six months with individual integration, launch vehicles, spaceports, DEVICES ground stations, Twiggs said. range safety and spacecraft operations. ALTA Twiggs, an astronautical engineering The Dashboard will include tools to help professor at Kentucky’s Morehead State schools coordinate ThinSat programs. MINNICH,

University, has graduate students testing Eventually, Twiggs and his team plan JASON

14 | SPACENEWS 10.23.17 ANTARES LAUNCH MISSION

Stage 2 Burnout 7 Stage 2 Ignition 6 8 to invite schools around the world to Payload Separation build ThinSats. Twiggs, for his part, is eager to see students to go through the full life cycle 5 Fairing Separation of a satellite with ThinSats. That was the idea behind cubestas, but as a professor 4 Stage 1 Separation Twiggs found it impossible due to the Release of ThinSats complexity of the satellites and payloads 3 Main Engine Cut-Off coupled with the difficulty of obtaining at 200km-250km rides into orbit at a reasonable cost. Cubesat launch costs rose as government and industry teams began adopting the 2 Lift Off form factor that was once used primarily by university researchers. 1 Stage 1 Ignition Bargain Pricing ThinSats are likely to cost one-tenth as much as cubesats to build and even less to launch, Voss said. to other launch providers about making An Orbital ATK Antares rocket will carry Twiggs hopes Antares rockets will room for the diminutive spacecraft. a load of ThinSats when it launches a Cygnus cargo tug to the ISS next fall. GRAPHIC make room for ThinSats on multiple “Rockets usually have excess capacity The ThinSats will be deployed after An- flights, providing students and teachers to the very low orbits nobody else wants tares’ second stage burns out.

PROGRAM with frequent rides into orbit. and this is a good way for companies to “I’m hoping that if I miss the first make an extra couple hundred thousand launch, I can get one in six months,” he dollars,” Holemans said. “There are slower

PHOTO/THINSAT said. “It’s not two years away.” ways to lose money than to be a launch

NASA ThinSat proponents also are talking services provider.” SN

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