Digital Commons Network^™

Progressing From High-Altitude Balloon Validation To Orbit: Establishing Cubesat Capability In Nevada Through Incremental Design, Kylee Brahma, Leandro Araiza, Christian Ługowski

Small Satellite Conference

UNLV ATLAS-1—Analysis of Temperature and Radiation in Low-Earth Orbit for Analog Studies—is a student-led 1U CubeSat mission at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The project uses an incremental approach, progressing from mock-satellite prototypes to high-altitude balloon flights and, ultimately, orbital deployment. By increasing system fidelity alongside student experience, UNLV ATLAS-1 aims to create a repeatable pathway for CubeSat development in Nevada and beyond.

Relative Position Determination For Satellite Formation Flying Using Radio-Wave Strength Considering Antenna Deformation, Sho Watanabe, Takaya Inamori, Yosuke Kawabata

Small Satellite Conference

Background:

Increasing use of formation flying in space missions:

• Requires formation establishment and maintenance
• Relative orbit determination is essential

Conventional Methods

• Camera
• Laser
• GNSS

Large size and mass are mostly required

Depends on the orbit and satellite attitude

Using received signal strength can overcome these limitations.

Software-Driven Multi-Strip Imaging Mission Planning And Attitude Control For An Agile 6u Earth Observation Cubesat, Fatimah Alzedany, Atif Mahmood

Small Satellite Conference

Mission Opportunity:

A 20-km native swath limits the ground coverage achievable by a nadir-pointing 6U CubeSat within a single orbital pass.

SOFTWARE, NOT NEW HARDWARE

Use access-window analysis and time-tagged attitude commands to exploit spacecraft agility without modifying the payload.

Solar-Assisted Battery Charging For The Chipsat Architecture: Chipsat Updates And Validation For The Descent Mission, Mark Lohatepanont, Joshua Umansky-Castro, Val Zeitlin, Matthew Hurford, Mason Peck, Andrew Filo, Alex Burke

Small Satellite Conference

DeSCENT is a suborbital mission to deploy 100 ChipSats from Blue Origin's New Shepard near 100 km altitude. The experiment characterizes ChipSat free-fall kinematics and dispersion, and demonstrates their potential for distributed atmospheric sensing. The updated ChipSat combines rechargeable energy storage and body-mounted solar cells with GPS, sensing, onboard logging, and 915 MHz LoRa communications. Lab testing and high-altitude balloon flights validate integrated power operation and long-range communications performance. Preliminary mechanical testing supports the remaining deployment and flight-verification effort.

Tbearr: Tardigrade Bio-Exploration Reproduction Research Payload, Chloe Nissen, Jameson Feeley, Kylie Nager, Wilmar Galvez Alfonso, Amber Paul, Sean Crouse, Larry Fineberg, Francisco Crespo Cutillas

Small Satellite Conference

The mission aims to design and build an external ISS payload module investigating the reproductive response of Hypsibius exemplaris (tardigrades) to prolonged radiation in Low Earth Orbit. Experimental success will be measured by population density, as well as analysis of glutathione (GSH) and glutathione disulfide (GSSG, counterpart to GSH) via spectrophotometric assays. This will determine the amount of reactive oxygen species (compounds that cause cellular damage, ROS) generated, and how much of it was neutralized. In-orbit experimentation data, through post-mission experimentation, will be analyzed through on-board or astronaut post-processing and testing procedures. This will provide insight into the mechanisms behind …

The Effects Of Space On Pharmacology And Traditional Medicine: A Review Of Current Literature And Its Potential Impacts On Space Therapeutics, Pratyush Majumdar

Small Satellite Conference

Astronauts in space commonly take medicine for sleep disorders, muscle aches, and other miscellaneous conditions. These medications are taken under the assumption that they will work in space comparable to their effect on Earth, but mounting evidence is emerging to demonstrate that this is not the case. Using the principles of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, there are many physiological changes that alter how a drug is processed, changing their therapeutic effect. As mission times get longer, there is a heavier need to understand these changes and compensate for them in order to keep astronauts safe.

Thermal Analysis Of Small Satellites, Devansh Patel

Small Satellite Conference

Accurate thermal modeling is essential to spacecraft design, ensuring components remain within operational temperatures throughout orbit. This study develops and validates thermal models of increasing complexity to gain practical experience in spacecraft thermal analysis.

The GRIFEX mission is a 3U CubeSat launched in a 634 km circular polar orbit by the Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL). The CubeSat observed both 90° and 0° beta angle orbits during its mission, making it optimal for comparing thermal analysis results for small satellites in low Earth orbit.

Toward Plug-And-Play Sensor Integration: A Multi-Protocol Hardware Bridge For Nanosatellites, Pawan Kumar, Moritz P. Heimbach, Shayarrn Khatiwada, Jiten Thapa, Marco Schmidt

Small Satellite Conference

COTS sensors speak many protocols; but the satellite bus understands only a few. An FPGA hardware bridge board reroutes heterogeneous sensor protocols (UART, SPI, RS-422, RS-485) to the single communication channel with minimum latency supporting plug-and-play with no bus redesign.

Using Ai And Photometry To Locate And Characterize Exoplanets For Small Satellites, Ella Vosburg, Herb Hess, Christine Page

Small Satellite Conference

This poster reports a theoretical design of a spectrometer and deformable mirrors on a CubeSat, coding for preprocessing of data, and how an AI model will be used in postprocessing with Jupiter and its moons as a test case.

Searching for and characterizing exoplanets has driven the design and execution of many observational space missions, as demonstrated by several well-known large telescopes. However, some challenges to expanding our knowledge of the universe remain, including competitive observation times and high cost. This leads to the incumbent methods of using archival transit and spectroscopic data.

Smaller satellites have an advantage on these …

Software For The Alpha Cubesat Mission: System Architecture, Development, And Testing Behind Successful Flight Operations, Eric Zhang, Jonathan Ma, Joshua Umansky-Castro, Lauren Greenhill, Duncan Mcdonald, Damian Hackett, Maria Boza, Cameron Goddard

Small Satellite Conference

Alpha CubeSat is a 1U CubeSat designed, built, and operated by a student-led team at Cornell University. Its primary mission is to deploy a free-flying lightsail in low Earth orbit, carrying gram-scale "ChipSat" flight computers as a demonstration of low-cost distributed sensing in space. The spacecraft was built around commercial, off-the-shelf hardware, including a Teensy 3.5 microcontroller as the primary flight computer and a RockBLOCK Iridium modem for communication, and was developed and flown under the constraints that define a student program: a small power budget, a rotating team, limited development time, and an intermittent operations radio link. The CubeSat …

Generalized Attitude Control For Small Spacecraft, Patrick Mckeen, Niclas Scheuer, Kerri Cahoy

Small Satellite Conference

Published controllers are derived for one actuator set, pointing goal, orbit, and disturbance model. Porting one means reproducing the paper, validating the implementation, then changing hardware and mission assumptions together.

Concept Of Operation Logic And Implementation Expectations For Multimode Propulsion Technology Demonstration Missions, Logan Thompson, Michael Harrigan, Theresa Sandborn, Victoria Coverstone, Joshua L. Rovey

Small Satellite Conference

Traditional single-mode propulsion systems are typically optimized for either high-thrust, short-duration maneuvers (chemical propulsion) or high-efficiency, low-thrust operations (electric propulsion). For CubeSats, which are limited by mass, volume, power, and system complexity, carrying separate propulsion systems for each mission phase is often impractical. Multimode propulsion systems overcome this limitation by combining chemical and electric propulsion within a shared architecture, allowing a single spacecraft to perform both rapid maneuvers and efficient long-duration orbit maintenance.

Demonstrating a multimode propulsion system requires more than operating two propulsion modes on the same spacecraft. Shared propellant, feed systems, thermal interactions, power usage, and transitions …

Ice Giant Watch Dog: Cubesat Concept To Monitor Weather On Neptune, Isabela Huckabee, Don Banfield, Nikole Lewis, Elijah Mullens, Abby Boehm

Small Satellite Conference

Why Neptune?

Neptune hosts one of the most dynamic weather systems in the solar system, yet it hasn't been closely observed since the Voyager-2 flyby. Existing observing programs [1,2] are too infrequent to capture the day-to-week timescales on which storms and clouds evolve, but a dedicated CubeSat could fill this gap.

The current project has two goals:

1. Explore the photometric precisions achievable by a CubeSat platform
2. Determine whether the presence of clouds will be detectable by a CubeSat platform

Lighting Up The Moon: A Scheduling Framework For Cislunar Space Based Solar Power Orchestration, Vaibhav Bhosale, Andrew Woo, Ada Gavrilovska, Christopher R. Valenta, Ketan Bhardwaj

Small Satellite Conference

Surviving the Lunar Night

• 14 Earth day lunar nights
• More batteries, more mass, higher cost

Sierasat: A 6u Cubesat Platform For Space-Based Solar Power, Sutharsan Indrakumar, Ahmed Guller, Leann Cwieka, Justin Parry, Minh Nguyen, Kaegan Lucas, Carson Bove, Chaitra Nulu, Myles Thomas, Sophia Jones, Deepak R. Mishra

Small Satellite Conference

Reliance on fossil fuels, combined with the physical limits of ground-based solar arrays, makes a strong case for collecting solar energy in orbit. Earth intercepts roughly 1.4 kW/m² at the top of the atmosphere, but absorption by carbon dioxide and water vapour and atmospheric scattering cut peak surface intensity to about 1.1 kW/m², this results in an over a 20% reduction. While inclination, time of day, and weather restrict that to a narrow band of land for a few hours each day.

The Solar Incident Energy Relay Array (SIERA) is a proposed mission that will create a single 6U CubeSat …

Building Research Infrastructure To Advance Recruitment And Retention Of Diabetes Mellitus Patients, Elidia V. Tafoya, Keith Henri Salvado, Latanya Dean, Pamela Josue, Briana Williams, Grissel Hernandez, Neera Ahuja

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

We assessed current strategies and built an infrastructure informed by historical studies demonstrating effective engagement of diverse participants to improve recruitment. Our objective was to increase enrollment of an inpatient health equity study experiencing food insecurity and diabetes mellitus (DM). This scalable model focused on supporting clinical integration for the development of a long-term, sustainable nutrition program.

This randomized control study included patients with a history of DM. The nursing research team screened patients using the validated, Hunger Vital Sign™ tool to assess for food insecurity. Using an evidence-based multifactorial approach, the implementation plan uses best practices to support socioeconomic …

The Reflective Voice Of Nurses Pursuing Graduate Studies In Defining The Nursing Profession, Suzanne Dupuis-Blanchard, Alisson Hache-Chiasson

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Nurses have difficulty describing their roles and the core components of the profession (1). The absence of understanding the profession and the unique role of nurses in the health system negatively impacts the profession (2, 3, 4). The goal of this qualitative descriptive study was to gain an understanding of the reasons that motivated nurses to enter the profession compared to how they describe their current role as a practicing nurse and to examine the discordance from the initial vision of being a nurse and their current interpretation of their role.

After ethics approval, data was collected by examining the …

Scholarly Success By Design: A Coaching-Informed Framework For Early Career Nurse Scholars, Abby Grammer Horton, Carrie Henry, Brittany Woods

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Early career nurse scholars often enter academia with strong clinical expertise but limited preparation in the organizational, emotional, and cognitive skills required for sustainable scholarly productivity. This workshop introduces a research-informed, coaching-based framework to help emerging scholars develop clarity, confidence, and strategic structures for success during the crucial early years of their academic careers. Grounded in evidence from professional coaching, emotional CPR (eCPR), cognitive load theory, and scholarly productivity research, this interactive session provides participants with tools to manage workload complexity, reduce overwhelm, and build sustainable academic rhythms.

Using a blend of experiential learning and applied skill-building, attendees will explore …

Building Competency Through Context: A Simulation-Driven Curriculum Redesign, Natalya Pasklinsky, Mary T. Hickey, Kristy Deyeso

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Traditional nursing curricula often emphasize isolated psychomotor skill instruction, limiting retention and transfer to complex clinical settings. Previously, students completed a three-hour skills lab followed by a single three-hour simulation. Faculty observed that, even immediately after the skills session, learners struggled to apply those same technical skills in simulation. During “double-day” sessions, both sequencing approaches produced similar performance gaps, revealing a misalignment between knowledge, skills, and reasoning, highlighting the need for a simulation-centered redesign to support contextual skill application.

Purpose: This project aimed to redesign the simulation curriculum to align with AACN Essentials (2021), advancing a competency-based framework emphasizing …

Cognitive Resilience In Action: Evaluating Neurological Adaptive Functioning In Nursing Students, Darlla Thompson, Shunda Wilburn

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Resilience is a critical competency for nursing students navigating academic stress and clinical uncertainty. This mixed-methods study evaluates the impact of a five-module neuroadaptive resilience training program on undergraduate nursing students’ stress regulation, cognitive flexibility, and clinical preparedness. The intervention integrates mindfulness-based resets, cognitive reframing drills, and executive function planning to promote neuroplasticity and emotional resilience in high-stress environments.

Reflective journaling and structured pre/post assessments will be used to measure changes in perceived stress, coping strategies, and professional identity formation. Quantitative data will be analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA to assess improvements in resilience and cognitive flexibility. Qualitative data from …

On The Double: Educating Veterans And Clinicians On Evidence-Based Ptsd Treatment Options, Jacquelyn Baldwin, Beth A. Pratt, Alan Peterson, Cheryl A. Krause-Parello

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop after a traumatic event and may impair cognition, mood, behavior, and increase risk of psychiatric illness and suicide (Mann et al., 2024). The lifetime prevalence of PTSD among United States (US) veterans can reach 29% depending on their period of military service (Judkins et al., 2020; Na et al., 2023). Many veterans still do not seek treatment. In a study of 13,824 veterans, less than 50% received PTSD treatment in the year after diagnosis (Grekin et al., 2021). Limited awareness of PTSD treatment options may be a cause. The aim of this dissemination initiative …

From Evidence To Impact: Academic-Clinical Partnership As A Mentorship Accelerator, Jackeline Iseler, Joshua Winowiecki

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Formal mentorship is widely recognized for strengthening nurses’ evidence-based practice (EBP) competencies and supporting nurse-led research, yet persistent gaps remain between academic preparation and clinical translation. This project synthesizes existing literature and cross-institutional case results to examine how mentorship, when fully embedded in Academic-Clinical Partnership (ACP) infrastructure, catalyzes system-level transformation that extends beyond individual gains.

We integrated a literature synthesis of nine studies with a multi-site case analysis across two ACPs:

1. A large community hospital with a structured mentorship program supporting frontline EBP/QI and research initiatives.

2. A large multi-hospital system piloting a structured academic-clinical mentorship initiative, pairing clinical …

Sci-Fi And Nursing: What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong, And What Is Our Next Frontier, Tara Marko, Matthew Mincey

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Introduction: Science fiction (Sci-Fi) has been imagining advances in human healthcare for over 200 years. With each advancement in technology, we can see parallels to Sci-Fi ideas that have now integrated into all aspects of the nursing profession.

Design: We will visually explore the history of nursing and healthcare depicted in Sci-Fi media, highlight key moments and predictions, and discuss how those predictions translate to technology that nurses use today. We will show the promises of Sci-Fi and how modern nursing is being shaped by technology that was once fantastical. We will also imagine what modern nursing could look like …

Open Visitation Hours: Improving Patient Outcomes In A Large Urban Hospital, Danielle Brochu, Victoria Freed

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Multiple studies have shown that patient clinical outcomes as well as patient/family satisfaction greatly improves with unrestricted visiting hours (Dragoi et al., 2022; Ning & Cope, 2020; Shao, 2022). The purpose of this project is to improve patient clinical outcomes and satisfaction by expanding visitation that enables families to be more present at the bedside and partner with nursing staff in patient care.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, patients around the world experienced an increase in negative physical and emotional impacts due to restrictions on family visiting (Hugelius et al., 2021). Post-pandemic, it is crucial to renew the focus on …

Advancing Sdg 6: Nursing-Led Home Follow-Up On Water Filtration In Rural Ecuador, Stephanie Black

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Globally, many communities still lack safely managed drinking water, and preventable waterborne disease remains common in rural and low-resource settings. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030.

Purpose: The purpose of this project was to evaluate the sustained use of household water filters, perceived health outcomes, and the impact of nursing-led water education among families in rural Ecuador one year after an initial clean water implementation project.

Methods: This completed follow-up project used a simple descriptive design. Nursing faculty and students returned to 10 participating families in …

Becoming Blind: Innovative Nurse Case Management For Improved Outcomes, Amie Koch

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Globally over 338 million people live with blindness or moderate to severe vision impairment, and is predicted to double by 2025. Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) is a maternally inherited mitochondrial disorder that causes sudden, severe vision impairment. Onset can occur throughout the lifespan, however it most often occurs during the teen/young adult years in males and young adult/middle age for females. LHON-affected individuals face health-care barriers, financial hardship, and psychosocial challenges. Individuals with LHON vision impairment are at increased risk for unintentional injuries, loneliness, depression, anxiety, and lower quality of life. A non-profit organization supporting LHON patients collaborated with …

Decolonizing Peer Review: Dismantling Epistemic Gatekeeping In Nursing Scholarship, Kechi Iheduru-Anderson

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Peer review in nursing privileges Western knowledge systems while marginalizing Indigenous, Global South, and community-based traditions. This colonial structure limits who contributes to nursing science, which methodologies are legitimate, and constrains culturally responsive care. Current practices exclude nurse researchers employing non-Western epistemologies, working in non-English languages, or prioritizing community-based approaches essential to addressing health disparities.

Purpose: This presentation examines peer review as a colonial mechanism and advocates for reforms democratizing nursing knowledge production. It explores how linguistic hegemony, methodological gatekeeping, and citation politics perpetuate epistemic injustice, and identifies alternative models from Latin America, Africa, and Indigenous communities fostering collaboration …

Understanding The Intersections Of Pregnancy, Ipv, And Hiv Risk Among Youth In The Galápagos, Natalia Andrea Villegas Rodriguez, Rainier Masa, Cindy Fraga-Rizzo, Mimi Chapman, Brian A. Garcia, Lucero Rocha-Dela Cruz, Lizbeth Arvizu, Amy Kaiser

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background and Purpose: Ecuador has one of the highest rates of youth pregnancy and intimate partner violence (IPV) (1). Youth pregnancy and IPV may also increase other risks, such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) (2). In Ecuador, HIV remains a concentrated epidemic that disproportionately affects youth aged 15–24 (2,3). Despite nationwide concern, little is known about these issues in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. The unique context of the Galapagos requires a distinct exploration of pathways linking youth pregnancy, IPV and HIV. The purpose of this study is to understand young adults’ perspectives about risk and protective factors for youth …

Design Improvement And Performance Demonstration Of A Six-Degree-Of-Freedom Thrust Measurement System For High-Precision Formation Flying Missions, Daigo Takasaki, Isamu Moriai, Ten Arai, Kenshin Yamakawa, Keisuke Yorita, Hiroyuki Koizumi, Kimiya Komurasaki

Small Satellite Conference

A six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) elastic pendulum thrust stand has been developed for comprehensive measurement of thrust and torque generated by micro-propulsion systems for future formation flying missions. This paper presents ongoing design improvements to the thrust stand, including the introduction of laser-scale displacement sensors and a supported mass design analysis. The analysis considered suspension spring stiffness, spring extension, and vacuum-chamber dimensional constraints. The results indicate that the proposed sensor configuration provides sufficient measurement resolution throughout the investigated design space, while the primary design constraints arise from suspension spring extension and equilibrium spring length. The analysis also provides design guidelines for supporting …

Design And Validation Of A Modular Cubesat Framework For In-Space Assembly, Michael Kuhl, Jonah Goldstein, Kerri Cahoy

Small Satellite Conference

On-orbit assembly enables modular, adaptable satellite architectures that bypass traditional launch volume and deployment response-time constraints. The Orbital Locker (ORLO) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explores this shift in space operations with a prototype-scale demonstration. Standardized satellite sub-U modules are stored within a free-flying mothercraft and assembled on demand by an onboard Cartesian gantry robot, which electrically and mechanically mates the modules into complete 1U and 2U CubeSats as a prototype-scale demonstration. Once assembled, the CubeSat is electrically verified and deployed from the mothercraft into its target orbit.

The ORLO prototype integrates a locker frame, Cartesian gantry robot, …