STARKVILLE — A group of 35 Mississippi State University students is planning to put the state’s first-ever satellite into orbit.
CubeSat MSU is a team of aerospace engineering students aiming to launch a small, cube-shaped satellite into space through the NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, a national program that provides the opportunity for educational institutions to launch small satellites.
The satellite the club plans to build will cost about $70,000, and it will use light imaging to detect wildfires from space.
According to Statista, a data collection website, there are more than 5,645 satellites in orbit. The United States owns 3,433, but none of those come from Mississippi. CubeSat MSU president Bentley Hillis and Jake Parr, leader for the groups guidance, navigation and communication team, told The Dispatch they and their colleagues decided to start the project in 2019 for two reasons: There wasn’t a student program at MSU to build satellites, and they wanted to be the first in the Magnolia state to do it.
“Mississippi is one of about six states that have yet to launch their own satellite and we wanted to fill that role and be the first one that comes from our state,” Parr said. “The main objective for us is to educate our members and launch the first satellite from the state of Mississippi. So it’s always kind of been a State pride goal.”
To begin the project, Hillis and his team received a $12,500 grant from the Mississippi Space Grant Consortium and are now planning to purchase aluminum parts, transceivers, antennas and other equipment to start building prototypes for the satellite. The students also need a ground station, with which the satellite will communicate, at MSU and have partnered with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to help test the communication equipment with ULL’s satellite, which has already been approved for launch.
“It’s great for a lot of our guys who are really into the radio side of things in the communications group,” Parr said. “That’s like the group that’s really working with ULL and it’s an interesting experience. We’re actually planning to go visit them at some point to see how they have everything set up so we can integrate our payload.”
Once complete, the satellite will use a modified camera with specialized light filters to find wildfires. The camera will take in light in the atmosphere, reflecting it onto sensors to detect high amounts of potassium in the air, which could indicate there is a wildfire present.
The team is in the design phase of the satellite and will start building prototypes for data collection, which the club will submit to NASA in November with its launch request. If all goes according to plan, NASA could approve the launch in March 2024. After that, the team can begin constructing the actual CubeSat to be shot into orbit.
The launch for the satellite is expected to take place between 2025 and 2026, Hillis said.
Before the project can launch off the pad, the team still has to secure at least $62,000 to complete the construction of the satellite, the ground station and to acquire the communication equipment they will use to direct the CubeSat and collect data.
Still, Hillis said that doesn’t come close to the amount it would cost just to launch the satellite without assistance from NASA or the millions of dollars a full-sized satellite would cost to build.
“If we included the launch, it would be more than $300,000,” Hillis said. “That’s not even having your own rocket, you’d be strapped to someone else’s payload. Rockets are just expensive.”
Hillis and Parr said to secure that funding, the club is looking both at home and abroad.
Those efforts include ongoing negotiations with the MSU Raspet Flight Research Laboratory to secure a potential ground station and other equipment they could use at no cost. They are also talking to the MSU Alumni Association, reapplying for the Mississippi Space grant and putting together other applications to the NASA Ames Research Center in Mount View, California.
“A lot of where the expenses lie is the upstart costs of getting the ground station that could reliably reach space,” Parr said. “Looking forward, we’re exploring some grants like the National Forest Service grant because wildfire detection is huge and that’s one of NASA Ames’ large things right now.
Aside from the financials, the project has been a place for students to gain experience with the initial designing of the satellite and even obtain networking experience through its partnership with ULL, which will be applicable to future internships and even jobs after college, Parr said.
“This absolutely helps you as an engineer,” he said. “You get to learn about things that aren’t just abstract stuff on a board. This project also involves real life project planning, taking in design parameters, which can look good on a resume.”
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