Flight Line | Winter 2019

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Aerospace Engineering

Flight Line

Aerospace Engineering • Cal Poly College of Engineering • Winter 2019

Propelling CubeSats to New Heights

AERO professor Amelia Greig and Computer Engineering student Luca Soares load a CubeSat with a Pocket Rocket into a Space Simulation Chamber for testing.

“Amelia is doing a great job improving the capabilities of our lab, and she has already made Cal Poly a key school for micro propulsion companies to collaborate with.” Jordi Puig-Suari

Amelia Greig is jettisoning the evolution of mini-satellites

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melia Greig hopes in the future Cal Poly students will send mini-satellites to the moon, Mars or Venus. But in order to become interplanetary travelers, those satellites – or “CubeSats” – are going to need a little boost and some direction. Because right now, they are catapulted into space on giant rockets, then set free to aimlessly drift. “They get pushed out the door, and they kind of just float,” Greig said. CubeSats – co-created by retired Cal Poly aerospace professor Jordi Puig-Suari – revolutionized space exploration by developing technology that allowed for smaller, less expensive satellites that could easily piggyback on rockets carrying other payloads. That accessibility encouraged risk and increased participation, said David Marshall, chair

of the Aerospace Department. Since their invention, thousands of CubeSats have been created by governments, private industry and students and launched off the planet. While the popular CubeSat technology originated at Cal Poly, the evolution of Cal Poly’s CubeSat work now includes work on propulsion and control, technology that would give CubeSats the ability go where they’ve never gone before – on purpose. “Adding propulsion systems to CubeSats will extend their use into longer missions with more sophisticated objectives,” Marshall said. “Amelia’s work, as well as the work of Cal Poly’s CubeSat and PolySat groups, will keep us at the forefront of the CubeSat community.”

Please see CubeSat Propulsion on Page 2


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