MGoShoe

October 14th, 2010 at 9:58 AM ^

...but so is this:

A 6.5-pound satellite is scheduled to become the first standalone spacecraft built by U-M students to go into orbit and perform a science mission.

The Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) is slated for launch Nov. 19 from Kodiak, Alaska. Its primary mission is to study how plasma instabilities in the highest layers of the atmosphere disrupt communication and navigation signals between Earth and orbiting satellites.

Working with scientists, students will use the data from RAX to build models that can forecast when these anomalies will occur. This will enable satellite operators to plan communications and operations around these disruptions.

The students involved in this project range from undergraduate to graduate students from the departments of Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. Many of these students also are part of the Student Space Systems Fabrication Lab, or S3FL, an organization dedicated to providing them with practical space systems design and fabrication experience.

While this will be the first standalone spacecraft built by students to go into orbit, it is part of a long history of space research at U-M. University researchers have built or are involved with instruments currently aboard spacecraft on 14 missions across the solar system. A host of other additional suborbital remote sensing and mass spectrometry spacecraft and satellite projects are under way through the Space Physics Research Laboratory.

You know what they say about space, bitches.