Engineering Commons^™

Assessment Of Educational Expectations, Outcomes And Benefits From Small Satellite Program Participation, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

This paper begins to characterize the educational outcomes that can be produced from student participation in a small spacecraft development program. We asked students what benefits they expected to receive from program participation and we asked them, at the end of the semester, what benefits they had received. We also characterized student performance through the use of post-participation Likert-like scale questions and the use of a widely-used questionnaire for assessing student research participation outcomes. We compare benefit expectation and attainment, characterize the level of benefits received across multiple types of participation and assess the effect of program participation on subject-specific …

Considering The Educational Benefits Of A Cubesat Program, Jeremy Straub, Samudra Haque, Christopher K. Dinelli

Jeremy Straub

This presentation will provide an overview of work performed at the University of North Dakota with regards to the characterization of educational benefits from small spacecraft development efforts. We report on efforts to characterize benefits that ensued from participation for personal extracurricular enrichment, as part of a formal class (on project management), as part of multiple senior design projects, for independent study credit and for satisfying class project requirements. This assessment has been performed using a standard questionnaire for student research participation as well as custom questionnaires related to program focus areas. We have also analyzed student course performance, where …

The Use Of Solar Balloons At Und As A Low-Cost Alternative To Helium Balloons For Small Spacecraft Testing And Stem Education, John Nordlie, Jeremy Straub, Chris Theisen, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

Helium-filled latex weather balloons have been utilized for many years to carry small satellite prototypes and subsystems into the stratosphere to allow testing in a “near space” (stratospheric) environment. A variety of environmental factors similar to the space environment can be found in this region, such as a rarified atmosphere, increased thermal stress including very low temperatures, increased solar radiation, the necessity of remote command and control, tracking, and telemetering of data. While this method of flight testing has been well-proven, a recent increase in the price of helium has driven the cost of such test programs to much higher …

The Use Of The Roofsat For Computer Science And Engineering Education, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

This poster presents an overview of a tool that has been created to provide students with real-world experience in the design, development and operation of control and scientific mission software for a cyber-physical system. The ROOFSAT, developed at UND, is a low-cost analog for a small spacecraft (though in many ways these capabilities also enable similar UAV work). The ROOFSAT was constructed with approximately $1,500 generously provided by the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences out of commercially-available parts. It includes multiple cameras, a pan-tilt mount and the same space-qualified computer hardware which has been used on both spacecraft …

The Use Of 3d Printing To Enable High Altitude Balloon Missions, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

The 3D printing technology allows the low-cost creation of structures based on user-defined configuration parameters. Unlike other plastic-forming technologies, there is no tooling cost related to the creation of a mold. Because of this, highly-customized structures can be created with a minimum production quantity of one, allowing adaptation to individual mission needs (for a single-HAB mission) or the change of the structure across a multi-unit run (e.g., to test various configurations or as part of a study requiring multiple payloads with different configurations).

This paper considers the mission possibilities enabled by the use of 3D printing for HAB structures. These …

Solar Ballooning: A Low-Cost Alternative To Helium Balloons For Small Spacecraft Testing, John Nordlie, Jeremy Straub, Chris Theisen, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

Helium-filled latex weather balloons have been utilized to carry small satellite prototypes and subsystems into the stratosphere to allow testing in a “near space” environment. This provides a variety of environmental factors similar to the space environment, such as a rarified atmosphere, increased thermal stress, increased solar radiation, the necessity of remote command and control, tracking, and telemetering of data. While this method of flight testing has been well-proven, a recent spike in the price of helium has driven the cost of such test programs to much higher levels. In this poster, an alternative technology to provide the flight mechanism, …

Openorbiter Small Spacecraft Development Program Educational Benefits, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

No abstract provided.