We’re competing against 11 other Canadian university teams to design a Triple CubeSat. These tiny satellites measure 10cm x 10cm x 30cm with a mass of less than 4kg, but are capable of great things. Our satellite will measure and map plasma densities in the Earth’s Ionosphere, which is a task currently performed by multi-million dollar GPS satellites. Not only does our new technology promise to be considerably less expensive, it will produce absolute measurements of the amount of plasma – something those fancy GPS satellites can’t do!
About the Competition
We are competing in the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge (CSDC). The CSDC is a two year competition hosted by Vancouver-based Geocentrix Technologies, Ltd. This competition invites university teams from across Canada to design and fabricate a small satellite. The winner of this competition will have their nanosatellite launched into low Earth orbit (about 600 to 800 kilometers above the surface of the earth) sometime during autumn of 2012.
The USST first joined the competition in September of 2010. We are currently over half way through the two year design of Saskatchewan’s first nanosatellite. The USST’s most recent accomplishment, completion of the preliminary design review in September of 2011, provided each of our five teams (structures, telemetry, command and data handling, power, and payload) with valuable feedback on their designs. Currently, the team is working towards the critical design review in February of 2012. After successfully passing the critical design review, we will begin construction of the satellite. Final testing of our satellite will be performed by a panel of experts, and at least one winning satellite will be chosen in October of 2012 to be launched into orbit.