After years of planning, construction and testing, the UNITE CubeSAT, a small research satellite designed and built entirely by University of Southern Indiana (USI) undergraduate students under the direction of Dr. Glenn Kissel, associate professor of engineering, was launched into space on aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. When it is launched from the ISS in 2019, it will be the first deployed satellite created by an Indiana higher education institution.
Within a month or two of arriving at the space station, astronauts will eject the CubeSat into orbit from the deployer using the Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System. The UNITE CubeSat is then expected to orbit the Earth for almost 15 months collecting plasma and temperature data while its orbital decay is carefully tracked. Funding for the project was made possible through NASA’s Undergraduate Student Instrument Project.
The satellite, the product of a NASA Undergraduate Student Instruments Project grant, passed its final Vibration Test in Indianapolis last spring. The CubeSat also received additional testing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Morehead State University.
