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After repeated delays, the launch date of UNM’s first satellite, Trailblazer, is still lost in space.
Craig Kief, program manager of Trailblazer, said the satellite launch has been delayed for more than a year. And the government shutdown has pushed the date further back, he said.
“It was supposed to launch on the fifth of November,” he said. “And now I’m being told it won’t be the fifth of November. Nobody knows when it will be because things like (the shutdown) often have a horrible domino effect where one delay here could cause another delay (there that) could cause another delay.”
Fifteen undergraduates and three graduate students at UNM worked on Trailblazer for 18 months, Kief said. He said the satellite aims to complete three different space missions, which will include testing new satellite design elements and measuring radiation.
“One is to be a flight proof of heritage for a bus architecture called Space Plug-and-Play,” he said. “Next is a flight of a dosimeter, so we’re just going to fly through the radiation fields and measure radiation and download it. And finally is the flight of a 3D-printed circuit board.”
Space Plug-and-Play is a bus network based on an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) design, Kief said.
Kief said Trailblazer will launch out of Wallops, Va., and will reach an elevation of about 500 km. He said the satellite will then settle into a stable orbit and remain there for about two years.
“It’s going to make a trip around the earth about every 90 minutes, traveling at about 5 miles a second,” he said. “I’m going to see it from horizon to horizon for about 15 minutes…So during that time I have to take my antennas that are up on the roof and quickly point it towards the satellite, track the satellite and download all my data.”
AFRL helped cover the costs of parts for the satellite, Kief said. He said the parts for Trailblazer cost about $35,000.
Brian Zufelt, lead engineer for Trailblazer, said the satellite will act as a “launching pad” to get UNM involved in space.
“In this city there are too many companies that are already dealing with space,” he said. “So this gives students an opportunity to start in their college career with stuff they’re going to see in industry.”
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Zufelt said the project originated in 2011, when UNM’s Configurable Space Microsystems Innovations and Applications Center (COSMIAC) submitted a proposal to build Trailblazer to NASA for the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) project.
“They give universities access to space,” he said. “We submitted a proposal and it was granted. But then we had to go find funding to build the satellite. At that point, AFRL helped a lot in the funding efforts.”
Zufelt said now that Trailblazer is ready for deployment, COSMIAC has begun work on other projects, such as ORS2, a satellite which is set to launch next year.
“Depending upon when the rocket is available, we’re looking at an April delivery or an August delivery,” he said.
Zufelt said the customer for the satellite is Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), which works with AFRL.
According to its website, ORS was established in 2007 by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Executive Agent for Space to “adapt space capabilities to changing national security requirements and to be an agent for change across the community.”
The ORS2 satellite is six times bigger than the size of Trailblazer, Zufelt said. He said it will also be a more expensive operation.
“That one’s a big project, I think that one is half a million dollars, if not more,” he said. “There are a lot of companies that are involved with that.”
Zufelt said ORS2 has already been constructed, but had been inaccessible because of the government shutdown.
ORS2 can be used by scientists to conduct experiments in space, Zufelt said. He said the satellite has dimensions of 8 inches by 8 inches by 4 inches. He said scientists could put more equipment, such as cameras, in this satellite.
“Most customers, they don’t want to really have to build the entire satellite,” he said. “They just want to have their experiment out there.”
COSMIAC also wants to construct its YOUSAT satellite, which will be almost completely constructed by a 3D printer, Zufelt said.
“We’re not looking for an actual launch for that one,” he said.
“We’re hoping to just put it through the rigors of testing, and at that time, we can provide it to someone who wants to use it to launch something.”
Zufelt said he hopes UNM will continue to participate in space projects because of how important they are to the city’s engineering community.
“Pretty much any company that (an engineering student) is going to get into here in Albuquerque is going to have a space component to it,” he said.
