Digital Commons Network^™

A Brief History Of Irrigation In Utah, Burdette Barker, Reagan Wytsalucy

All Current Publications

Irrigation is essential for most crop production in Utah. With an ever-increasing population, regular drought cycles, and environmental concerns, there is a public discourse about agricultural irrigation water use. This fact sheet is an effort to step back in time to consider the heritage of irrigated agriculture in Utah, from prehistory to the present, and the modernization of irrigation driven by global industrialization and the information age.

2026 Report On The State Of Great Salt Lake Social Science, Creed Jones, Avyrlie Smith, Shae Barber, Stacia Ryder, Mufti Nadimul Quamar Ahmed, Georgie Corkery, Jennifer Givens, Anna Mcentire, Carla Trentelman, Jessica Ulrich-Schad, Kirsten Vinyeta, Bryn Watkins

Publications

Great Salt Lake (GSL) faces rapid decline that presents more than just a hydrological risk; it poses an existential social hazard. As water levels decline, ecosystems, economies, cultures, and societies face irreversible harm. Since the lake reached its lowest levels in 2022, this issue has specifically gained increased attention in Utah and beyond. Given both the degree to which human consumption contributes to the problem, and the potential risks that the drying of the lake poses for community health, social science research is a crucial for informing successful water management policies and mitigating impacts. The purpose of this report is …

Youth Gopher Trapping: Benefits For Agriculture And Youth, Melanie Heaton, Kalen Taylor

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Utah State University Extension partnered with local government and conservation districts to reduce agricultural losses while creating meaningful opportunities for youth. Over three years, 92 participants removed 3,941 rodents, earned $26,620, and gained practical skills through hands-on conservation work. The program shows how Extension-led partnerships can strengthen agricultural profitability, youth development, and community collaboration at the same time.

Expanding Access To Outdoor Recreation Through Adaptive Trail Riding In Utah, Makenna L. Pahlke

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Limited access to outdoor recreation limits opportunities for people with disabilities to enjoy the physical and psychosocial benefits of horseback riding. The Utah State University Equine Experience, an Extension program focused on horses, assessed an adaptive trail riding initiative for participants aged 12 to 40. Findings showed improvements in confidence, self-awareness, engagement, and social connections, highlighting the public benefit of enhancing accessible equine-assisted activities.

Improving Public Perceptions Of Dairy Production Through On-Farm Educational Tours, Drew Swartz, Justin Wyatt Clawson, Jaydee Gunnell, Elise Jenson, Dylan Waldron, Jenna Dyckman

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Utah dairy producers identified public perceptions as a top concern. Utah State University Extension partnered with Cache County organizations to offer dairy farm tours. Participants reported increased knowledge, more favorable perceptions, and stronger intentions to engage with agriculture, supporting experiential education as a means to strengthen understanding of dairy production.

Piloting The Strong Bodies Strength Training Program In Utah, Gabriela Murza, Jenna Dyckman, Cris Meier, Emma Parkhurst, Sadie Wilde, Christina Pay, Naomi Brower, Cindy Nelson

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Muscle and bone loss occurs as we age, impacting health and independence. We evaluated a pilot 12-week strength training program for older adults in Utah. Participants showed improved fitness metrics and increased confidence. Results demonstrate the program’s effectiveness and public value in expanding access to evidence-based exercise that supports healthy aging.

A Discrepancy Evaluation Of Workforce Capacity And Emerging Skills: A Utah Case Study, Lendel K. Narine, Paul A. Hill, Andreé Walker-Bravo

Extension Research

This study examined employer-perceived competency discrepancies, anticipated competency requirements, hiring barriers, and valued educational experiences in Utah. Survey data were collected between September and October 2025 from 226 individuals with hiring responsibility in Utah-based organizations. The Ranked Discrepancy Model (RDM) quantified discrepancies between respondents’ ratings of competency importance and their satisfaction with demonstrated employee proficiency. Respondents reported the largest discrepancies for time management, critical thinking, conflict resolution, ethical judgment, and verbal communication of ideas. Respondents rated communication, collaboration, analytical thinking, and lifelong learning highest among competencies anticipated to matter most over the next five to ten years. Most employers identified …

American Plum Borer In Utah Orchards (Euzophera Semifuneralis), Emilie Demard, Marion Murray, Claudia Nischwitz

All Current Publications

This fact sheet provides information on American plum borer in Utah orchards, also known as APB. This pest primarily damages fruit trees. APB moths were detected in traps in 2026, but to date, no tree damage has been found. This fact sheet discusses hosts, identification, and management methods.

Operational Resilience In Cubesat Tracking Operations Through Complementary Architectures At Dss-17, Andrea Togni, Emily Walter, Chloe Hart, Ryan Collins, Noah Patrick, Christo Smith, Nathan Fite, Benjamin Malphrus, Marc Sanchez-Net

Small Satellite Conference

Loss of phase-locked loop (PLL) lock during CubeSat tracking can simultaneously eliminate both telemetry and Doppler observables, leaving operators blind during critical mission phases. While closed-loop receivers provide high-precision tracking under nominal conditions, they remain vulnerable to low signal-to-noise ratio, rapid Doppler dynamics, oscillator instability, and modeling errors. This single-point failure mode reduces operator situational awareness precisely when it is most needed. This work presents a dual-acquisition architecture that eliminates single point failure in CubeSat ground tracking. Implemented at DSS-17, Morehead State University's 21-meter deep-space antenna, the system pairs a conventional closed-loop modem with a parallel open-loop receiver implemented on …

The Billion Dollar Surprise: How Solar Cycle 25 Cut Satellite Lifetimes In Leo, Scott Shambaugh

Small Satellite Conference

Solar Cycle 25 has run far stronger than the 2019 consensus forecast issued by the NOAA/NASA/ISES prediction panel, with densities in low Earth orbit from 2022-2026 holding at 2-3x the predicted levels. The cumulative drag impulse experienced by LEO satellites, which is the driving metric for propellant budgets and mission lifetimes, reached 5-6 standard deviations beyond the forecast’s stated uncertainty. This means that even operators who designed conservatively against the two-sigma worst case fell short of their drag budgets. This paper quantifies a lower bound on the economic cost of that misprediction.

Starting from the 13,704 payloads on-orbit below 800 …

High Data Rate Scalable N X 100g Transceiver For Cube/Small Sats For Cis-Lunar, Geo, And Data Center Applications, Christopher Krush, Alexandra Castle-Jones, Victoria Kennedy, Keith G. Petrillo, Mark Storm

Small Satellite Conference

Optical data transport in the cis-lunar regime is an enabling capability for sustained lunar exploration, space-based astronomy, and distributed sensing architectures. This paper presents the design, analysis, and experimental validation of a 100 Gb/s-class coherent optical communication transceiver that extends beyond LEO to GEO and cis-lunar applications. Target missions include lunar constellations, relays at Earth–Moon L1, and direct-to-Earth links, with relevance to NASA Artemis campaigns, enabling a future lunar infrastructure, and high-throughput science missions. This technology also supports future space data centers with the potential for Terabit optical links using WDM.

System-level performance requirements are derived from a parametric link …

Energy-Aware Dynamic Tasking For Earth Observing Satellites With Deep Reinforcement Learning, Nicholas Nordlund, Tim Upthegrove, Leandros Tassiulas

Small Satellite Conference

Dynamic tasking for agile Earth-observing satellites (AEOS) adapts preplanned schedules using onboard lookahead sensors to detect cloud cover that obscures targets. Existing approaches decompose tasking into sequential lookahead, maneuver, and capture stages, limiting their ability to manage tradeoffs over long time horizons. Instead, we formulate dynamic tasking as a constrained partially observable Markov decision process (CPOMDP) and introduce Cloud-Aware Dynamic Earth-observation Tasking (CADET), a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework that jointly selects maneuvering and sensing actions under resource constraints. We derive a closed-form model for the probability that a target is visible given a spatially aggregated lookahead observation, …

From Estimation To Certainty: Enhancing Smallsat Constellation Replenishment Planning With Physics-Based Solar Forecasting, Scott W. Mcintosh, Katherine Monson, Carolyn Belle, Chris Habib, Brianna Aubin

Small Satellite Conference

Poster Presented at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

Investigation Of A Demonstration Mission For Three-Dimensional Remote Sensing Using “Structured Radio Waves” With Orbital Angular Momentum, Hisatoshi Kimura, Tsukasa Funane, Yosuke Tanabe, Miki Yonehara, Makoto Ito, Keigo Nakamura, Yasuyuki Miyazaki, Satoshi Ikari, Shinichi Nakasuka, Koichi Watanabe

Small Satellite Conference

Background

• As a new radar technology for remote sensing, three-dimensional observation methods using electromagnetic waves with spatial phase distributions are being studied to obtain azimuth-angle information in addition to conventional radar measurements^[1].
• We are considering the use of “structured radio waves”, which are formed by superposing two radio waves carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), as radio waves with spatial phase distributions^[2,3].

Purpose

• Evaluate the effects of satellite position and attitude errors on azimuth-angle estimation and clarify the requirements for a demonstration mission. 
• Assess the feasibility and provide recommendations.

Modular, Scalable Electroadhesive Technology For Rapid Response Satellite Servicing And De-Orbit, Kalia Crowder, Victor Agüero

Small Satellite Conference

Building on previous surface attachment testing and a study of the Cambrian Works Space Payload for Inertial Despin Efficient Effects (SPIDEE) architecture carried out under AFRL support, this work presents a modular, scalable electroadhesive attachment architecture enabling rapid-response satellite servicing and de-orbit missions. Prior test and analysis campaigns provided quantified performance validation across the small satellite size range, from 3U CubeSats to ESPA-class platforms, demonstrating the scalability required for diverse time-critical servicing scenarios.

Testing validated performance under representative on-orbit conditions and dynamic scenarios. Attachment force measurements across spacecraft materials representing aluminum bus structures, composite panels, multi-layer insulation, and solar cells …

Design, Qualification, And Implementation Of Modular Spacecraft Radio Testing Enclosures For Small Satellite Missions, Dexter Stewart

Small Satellite Conference

As small satellite missions evolve, spacecraft platforms increasingly integrate radio-frequency (RF) antennas to support telemetry, command, and inter-satellite communication links that must be verified following full system integration. Recent changes in launch site safety policy, most notably SpaceX’s ban on over-the-air (OTA) testing, have created a critical gap in the ability to qualify spacecraft communication systems during testing at the launch site. This paper presents the design, qualification, and implementation of modular RF containment enclosures, known as ’antenna hats’, developed to enable safe, non-OTA testing of fully integrated small satellites. The antenna hats are self-contained enclosures that interface directly with …

Beyond Parametric Adaptation: Periodic Redesign For Reaction Wheel Degradation In Precision Pointing Cubesats, Bruno Ingrao

Small Satellite Conference

CubeSat missions increasingly require sustained science-grade precision pointing over long durations. Although sub-arcsecond line-of-sight (LoS) stability is achievable, maintaining this performance is challenged by nonlinear, speed-dependent, and time-varying reaction wheel behavior. As actuator degradation progresses from beginning-of-life (BOL) to end-of-life (EOL), model-plant mismatch can lead to significant pointing degradation and potential loss of mission capability. This work investigates the limitations of fixed-gain and parametric adaptive control under degraded actuator conditions and proposes a periodic identification and controller redesign framework. The approach detects persistent model mismatch using innovation-based consistency and performance metrics, triggers on-orbit identification, and updates the actuator model using …

Spot: A Cubesat Mission For High-Resolution Monitorig Of Anthropogenic Sulfur Emissions, Carla Roesch, Colleen Golja, James Custer, Catherine Ember, Jerome Woodwark, Andrew Matheson, Joshua Vande Hey, Sonymol Vk, Steven Heer, Zixuan Gao, Tim Trent

Small Satellite Conference

Resolving individual industrial sources of SO₂ to constrain aerosol forcing — one of the largest remaining uncertainties in Earth's energy budget.

A Stackable Multi-Mppt Power Architecture With Paralleled Inputs For Scalable Cubesat Solar Energy Harvesting, Muhammed Syedali N., Anamika A. Kamath, Nithin Krishnan S. S., Ashfaque K. P., Sijo George, Arun P., Jr-Chiun Roger Tsai, Tensae Ali, Jesmin Jose, Athira B. S.

Small Satellite Conference

In traditional CubeSat configurations, the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) circuit acts as a critical single point of failure because all harvested solar energy is funneled through a single, non-redundant conversion stage. Consequently, the failure of this individual component completely blocks power delivery to the system, permanently stranding otherwise healthy solar arrays and batteries and causing catastrophic mission termination.

This work introduces a modular, stackable solar energy architecture that distributes power conditioning across multiple identical, autonomous modules connected to shared PV and battery buses. By relying purely on analog input-voltage regulation at a common operating point, it eliminates radiation-vulnerable digital …

Autongc Flight Opnav Experiment Results On Capstone, Andrew J. Liounis, Sun Hur-Diaz, Behnam Azimi, Nichalas L. Cason, Chris R. Gnam, Grant Hecht, Steven Z. Queen, Michael J. Romeo, Sean R. Semper, Nathan Stacey, Andrew Tennenbaum, Daniel G. Berdugo, Carl J. De Vries, Benjamin Leser, Anne Long, Liam A. Greenlee, Joseph W. Patton, Steven B. Slegel, Isaac R. Witte

Small Satellite Conference

Summary: We successfully demonstrated on-board automated optical navigation (OpNav) in a lunar near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) using images of the Moon, the Earth, and other solar system bodies, advancing the technology readiness level (TRL) of the autonomous guidance navigation and control (autoNGC) OpNav capabilities from 5 to 7.

Resilient Positioning And Resident Space Object Identification Using Miniaturized Star Tracker Hardware, Justin Kruger, Aviad Golan, Simone D’Amico

Small Satellite Conference

Robust alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (APNT) is a critical enabling capability in orbits where GNSS availability is degraded or denied.

Timely, accurate space situational awareness (SSA) knowledge is necessary for autonomy and safety in dynamic space environments.

Swap: An Ai-Enabled Cubesat For Low-Latency Space Weather Alerting, Miles H. Currie, Douglas Franz, Paul Kocyla, Omar Sharaf, Sarvesh Garimella

Small Satellite Conference

1 — Background

• Growing dependence on space-based assets (telecom, transport, grid, GPS) = growing space-weather exposure
• A Carrington-class storm today would mean cascading failures and losses in the trillions
• Current assets (e.g. GOES, ACE, DSCOVR) are excellent but large, costly, and with minutes to hours of alert latency from ground processing; weak coverage off the Earth–Sun line, where multi-point views could untangle the solar flare/SEP/ CME chain
• The Space Weather Alerting Platform (SWAP) concept mission (right) is a low-cost, 3U cubesat solution for proliferated solar monitoring with low-latency onboard AI alerting

Environmental Durability Of Silver Teflon Fep Thermal Control Tape Protected By A Sio2/Nicr Backcoat, Warren Su, Brian Phan

Small Satellite Conference

Silver Teflon® FEP thermal control tapes are widely used on small satellites due to their low solar absorptance and high infrared emittance. However, long-term operation in low Earth orbit (LEO) is often limited by degradation mechanisms associated with atomic oxygen (AO), ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and thermal cycling. In particular, silver–adhesive interactions and defect-mediated undercutting have been identified, based on results from NASA’s Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) mission (5.7 years in LEO), as primary contributors to the increase in solar absorptance over mission life. This work investigates a SiO₂/NiCr protective backcoat film stack sputtered on top of the …

Lightweight Open Source On-Spacecraft Machine Learning With Mlpack And F Prime, Ryan R. Curtin, Scott M. Gilliland, Sterling L. Peet

Small Satellite Conference

Onboard machine learning is an increasingly important topic in spaceflight systems, as machine learning and AI models are increasingly used for data processing, anomaly detection, attitude control systems, and other predictive applications. However, successfully deploying a machine learning model in a spaceflight computing environment is fraught with difficulty, as spaceflight computing environments are low-resource, but typical machine learning software solutions are implemented in languages like Python, which require an interpreter and other heavyweight dependencies. It is therefore virtually mandatory for any on-spacecraft machine learning to be written with lightweight toolkits that minimize dependencies and resource usage.

We demonstrate a solution …

A Miniaturized, High Geometric Factor, Electrostatic Analyzer For Fast Plasma Measurements, Dhiren Kataria, Justyna M. Sokol, Jianliang Lin, Camden Ertley, Jonathan Gasser, Guy Grubbs, Kwang-Joo Hwang, Michael Starkey

Small Satellite Conference

With advances in machining techniques that can manufacture high aspect ratio structures at high accuracy, cylindrical geometry electrostatic analyzers present a versatile alternative to spherical designs. We report on the development of the 3D Cylindircal And Tiny Spectrometer (3D-CATS), a novel space plasma analyzer that performs instantaneous 3D (multiple energy, azimuth and elevation angles) measurements, providing differential energy, wide field of view particle imaging in a compact, low-SWaP (size, weight and power) package.

The baseline analyzer design consists of a nest of 8 cylindrical analyzers, providing measurements of incoming particle energy distributions over an energy range of 10 eV to …

Optimization Of Orbit-Maintenance Strategies For Small Satellites In Cislunar Space, Timothy Lauinger, Bradley Cotten, Robert E. Zee

Small Satellite Conference

Renewed interest in lunar exploration and the development of a sustained cislunar economy has driven demand for low-cost missions supporting mapping, communications networks, navigation services, and scientific studies. Recent growth in rideshare opportunities to the Moon has made small-satellite architectures a viable and cost-effective approach for these missions. Successful execution of these missions, however, depends critically on fuel-efficient and reliable orbital insertion and maintenance strategies, as cislunar missions impose substantially higher delta V requirements than low-Earth orbit missions due to the inherent instability of low lunar orbits. Perturbations arising primarily from lunar mass concentrations drive secular growth in orbital eccentricity …

Nasa Stari Mission: A Formation-Flying Pathfinder For Space Interferometry, Akshat Dubey, Caden Burkhardt, Raven St. Clair, Austin Thomas, Tobey Chang, Shivani Sunil, Jacob Klingler, Bradley Bialke, Hannah Cherry, Adrien Boissy, Yethinder Ragav Lakshmi Kumar, Daniil Voloshin, Michael Meyer, John D. Monnier, James W. Cutler, Ethan Foss, Samuel Y. W. Low, Antonio Rizza, Simone D'Amico, Althea Noonan, Mark Gorrow, E. Glenn Lightsey, Melissa Flores, Alexa Lapinta, Albert Ostoja-Starzewski, Leonid Pogorelyuk, Gautam Vasisht, Kerri Cahoy

Small Satellite Conference

The STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry (STARI) mission is a NASA-funded two spacecraft 8U CubeSat technology demonstrator currently in Phase B designed to advance key capabilities required for future space-based optical interferometers. STARI will demonstrate end-to-end beam transfer by reflecting starlight from one spacecraft to another and injecting the received beam into a single-mode optical fiber when it launches in 2029. Formation flying and transferring starlight at very close proximities (25-200 m) presents GNC challenges such as collision safety, precision position control, and fast, precise beam control. The mission ConOps along with a sophisticated GNC system enables passively safe …

Software Defined Swarms, Nathan Benz, Scott Miller, Jeff Huang, Sonny Hwang, Todd Sarshad, Edmund De La Cruz, Thomas Magesarcher

Small Satellite Conference

The Starling Extended Mission has demonstrated the transformative potential of software-defined architectures in multi-spacecraft swarms. Building on the original Starling mission, which validated autonomous coordination and networking among small satellites, the extended phase focused on adaptability—updating onboard payload software and software-defined radios (SDRs) to enable entirely new experiments without hardware modifications. This capability signals a new approach: spacecraft swarms can evolve post-launch to meet emerging scientific and operational objectives. 

Central to this extension was the deployment of new software enabling two-way ranging and “reverse GPS” source identification using raw radio frequency (RF) signals. Traditionally, ranging and navigation rely on pre-integrated …

Sar Disksat Demonstration Mission For Constellation In Vleo, Hirobumi Saito, Mitsuteru Kaneoka

Small Satellite Conference

We proposed a novel concept of quasi-two-dimensional SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites, SAR DiskSats, in 2023 at this conference. This year, in 2026, the demonstration missions of SAR DiskSats are authorized by the Japanese government as a Space Strategy Fund’s Mission. This paper describes the concept and the mission scenario of the demonstration mission in 2028 and 2030. The SAR DiskSat features a deployable passive slot array antenna that can be compactly folded within the quasi-two-dimensional satellite body. This configuration allows for flexible solar cell sheets to be installed on the backside of the antenna, as the antennas do not …

Asynchronous One-Way Range (Aowr) – Alone Positioning And The Applications, Junichiro Kawagichi, Shingo Nishimoto

Small Satellite Conference

The paper first reports the recent operational results of the HOKUSHIN satellite. It explains how our extended code correlation method has performed and provides link threshold information, specifically the demonstrated C/N0 figures. The paper next focuses on cis-lunar space applications, beginning with direct AOWR-alone positioning directly from Earth using three or more small-aperture ground stations. The application employs a ‘Self-Positioning’ strategy. This system operates in cis-lunar space with 3-meter-class ground stations and CubeSats larger than 6U in size equipped with 200x300 mm patch-array antennas on. It enables universities and startups to conduct genuine lunar exploration. The team won the Strategic …