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U Maine CubeSat MESAT1. Courtesy of Ali Abedi.
Maine’s first small research satellite, designed to engage middle and high school students in STEM, is expected to launch into orbit within the next couple of months.
Firefly Aerospace, a company based in Cedar Rapids, Texas, integrated the nearly 1 foot tall satellite, known as MESAT1, into a rocket to be launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California. The integration was conducted inside Firefly’s clean room in Vandenberg by Joseph Patton, a Ph.D. student at the University of Maine Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Ali Abedi, principal investigator for the project and professor of electrical and computer engineering.
MESAT1 is a cube satellite, or CubeSat, a type of nanosatellite that offers cost effective opportunities for research. Students and faculty from UMaine designed, built and tested the components for MESAT1 in collaboration with the University of Southern Maine, a trio of K-12 schools, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation and the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. The $522,000 project is supported by grants from NASA and Maine Space Grant Consortium.
An exact day and time for the launch will be announced at a later date.
“Integrating the satellite into the dispenser on board the launch vehicle is the most important milestone before launch,” said Abedi, who also serves as associate vice president of research at UMaine. “This signifies culmination of five years of research and development, building, testing, licensing and flight certification.”
Once launched into Earth’s low orbit, MESAT1 will orbit from six months to two years, providing students and teachers in Maine access to space data for educational and research purposes. Developers hope access to satellite data will encourage students to pursue STEM careers.
“Working on the MESAT1 project has been a challenging and educational opportunity, and it’s exciting to finally get to launch the spacecraft into orbit,” Patton said.
The satellite is equipped with three cubic-shaped payloads designed by students in Falmouth High School, Fryeburg Academy and Saco Middle School who are conducting individual experiments. Equipped with four cameras, the satellite will offer data for these experiments by periodically taking pictures of Earth and sending them back to the ground station at UMaine, where the satellite will be controlled.
The payload from Saco Middle School, dubbed ALBEDO, will investigate the impact of albedo — the fraction of solar irradiation reflected back into space — on local temperature. The goal is to compare temperature and albedo across urban and rural areas and determine whether urban heat islands can be mitigated through architectural designs that maximize albedo.
Fryeburg Academy’s payload, IMAGER, will be used to study an application of a low-cost remote sensing tool for coastal estuaries. Through modifying a digital camera, the project team will develop a remote sensing tool to image shallow, coastal waters. Capturing these images will allow the group to distinguish water quality properties such as turbidity and phytoplankton concentration.
The third payload from Falmouth High School, HAB, will study harmful algal blooms to see if they increase atmospheric temperature and water vapor levels in the atmosphere above them. Developing the capacity to monitor and identify algal blooms from orbit will provide a simple way to track the development, distribution and dispersion of blooms.
The projects from Falmouth High School, Fryeburg Academy and Saco Middle School were chosen from 11 proposals submitted during a statewide competition for schools hosted by the Maine Space Grant Consortium in 2019.
MESAT1 is one of 18 small research satellites selected by NASA to carry auxiliary payloads into space as part of its CubeSat Launch Initiative. The program provides opportunities for nanosatellite science and technology payloads built by universities, schools and nonprofit organizations to rideshare on space launches.
The satellite is one of several projects from the UMaine Space Initiative, which brings together faculty, administrators, staff and students to advance Maine’s space-based economy and help build a skilled workforce in the field. Additionally, efforts are underway to develop a new Maine SpacePort Complex to develop, manufacture and launch nanosatellites into polar orbit. The complex will include an Innovation Hub with research, development and manufacturing facilities.
See the full article here.
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The University of Maine is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine is one of only a few land, sea and space grant institutions in the nation. It is classified among “R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity”.
With an enrollment of approximately 11,500 students, The University of Maine is the state’s largest college or university. The University of Maine’s athletic teams, nicknamed the Black Bears, are Maine’s only Division I athletics program. Maine’s men’s ice hockey team has won two national championships.
The University of Maine was founded in 1862 as a function of the Morrill Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Established in 1865 as the Maine State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the college opened on September 21, 1868 and changed its name to the University of Maine in 1897.
By 1871, curricula had been organized in Agriculture, Engineering, and electives. The Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station was founded as a division of the university in 1887. Gradually the university developed the Colleges of Life Sciences and Agriculture (later to include the School of Forest Resources and the School of Human Development), Engineering and Science, and Arts and Sciences. In 1912 the Maine Cooperative Extension, which offers field educational programs for both adults and youths, was initiated. The School of Education was established in 1930 and received college status in 1958. The School of Business Administration was formed in 1958 and was granted college status in 1965. Women have been admitted into all curricula since 1872. The first master’s degree was conferred in 1881; the first doctor’s degree in 1960. Since 1923 there has been a separate graduate school.
Near the end of the 19th century, the university expanded its curriculum to place greater emphasis on liberal arts. As a result of this shift, faculty hired during the early 20th century included Caroline Colvin, chair of the history department and the nation’s first woman to head a major university department.
In 1906, The Senior Skull Honor Society was founded to “publicly recognize, formally reward, and continually promote outstanding leadership and scholarship, and exemplary citizenship within the University of Maine community.”
On April 16, 1925, 80 women met in Balentine Hall — faculty, alumnae, and undergraduate representatives — to plan a pledging of members to an inaugural honorary organization. This organization was called “The All Maine Women” because only those women closely connected with the University of Maine were elected as members. On April 22, 1925, the new members were inducted into the honor society.
When the University of Maine System was incorporated, in 1968, the school was renamed by the legislature over the objections of the faculty to the University of Maine at Orono. This was changed back to the University of Maine in 1986.