RIT Space Exploration Group (SPEX) and the Cubesat proposal

Organization Mission and Initiatives

Mission RIT SPEX is a newly founded organization designed to bring faculty and staff together to work on space system engineering initiatives, provide research opportunities for undergraduates, graduates and doctoral students. Additionally, we as an organization was to establish RIT’s presence in various national space systems engineering programs such as the CubeSat Launch Initiative, putting RIT on the map for space system engineering, science and design.

Initiatives

Laser Uplink Experiment The Laser Uplink Experiment has the potential to be RIT’s first satellite. CubeSats are 10cm x 10cm x 10cm satellites, and are typically less than 1.33 kg. Because of their small size, these vehicles are inexpensive to produce, great for education and easy to launch. Via the CubeSat Launch Initiative, this vehicle should be able to go low Earth orbit for free.

This mission has two main science goals. The first primary science goal is to demonstrate laser uplink technologies for future space exploration. There have been a few tests in the past few years demonstrating the technology and there has been a push within the Cubesat community to see if Cubesats can receive and interpret laser communications at their size. The second mission objective will help RIT develop better tracking algorithms. By placing LEDs on the vehicle, it will increase its apparent magnitude and make it visible to scientists and the general populace.

Radio and Visual Tracking With a colleges and experience available on campus, RIT SPEX is uniquely prepared to develop tracking algorithms utilizing both radio data and visual information from observatories. Using telescopes available in the area and on RIT’s campus, there are many opportunities to create better methods for understanding how spacecraft move and how orbits will change over time due to the shape of the planet, the air particles satellites collide with and pressure from photons from the sun hitting vehicles. Tools will be developed by engineers, experiments will be manned by technicians and scientists and data will be evaluated by mathematicians.

To Come-High Altitude Ballooning & METEOR Project Revival On campus, there is a long history of space systems engineering through the METEOR project, which aimed to develop a RIT-derived launch platform that is assisted by balloon to get to a high altitude, and then deploy a small rocket attached underneath. Conceivably, this system would be a low-cost way to space and RIT SPEX would like to revive this senior design project series.

Facebook.com/ritspex

Sites.sg.rit.edu/spex