A team of Brown University students is a winner of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair for demonstrating an innovative and cost-effective approach to satellite design.
It normally takes five to six years to build and launch a satellite, not to mention millions of dollars. Students at Rhode Island’s Brown University proved this doesn’t always have to be the case, completing a 445-day satellite mission in August 2023. They successfully built, launched, and tested a functional satellite using off-the-shelf components and 3D-printed parts, all within a year and on a minimal budget, showing the potential for affordable space access and responsible deorbiting technology.
The question
What’s the cheapest satellite that can be built using the easiest parts? And can such a satellite, equipped with a drag sail for minimizing space junk, be built and launched in just one year?
The results
A small team of Brown University students, comprising both graduates and undergraduates, achieved a significant feat last year by constructing an incredibly cost-effective 3U cubesat named SBUDNIC. The satellite, a cheeky nod to Sputnik and an acronym for the project’s participants, launched to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 25, 2022, and a D-Orbit space tug moved the device to its operational orbit.
The satellite cost just $10,000 to build and included off-the-shelf components, such as an Arduino Uno, four dozen Energizer AA batteries, some Kapton tape, a ham radio, and a commercially available 3U frame (3U refers to a type of small satellite that fits within a standardized 3-unit cubesat form factor). It also included many 3D-printed parts, which isn’t normal for satellites, and a chassis forged in a machine shop.
“If you want to do something, like getting something to space, you don’t want to have to rebuild the wheel,” said Dheraj Ganjikunta, lead program manager. “You don’t need to rebuild a computer or rebuild the battery, right?”
The SBUDNIC team was split into groups, each handling a specific aspect of the satellite: the structure, temperature control, tracking and communication, power supply, data management, payload, radio system, and orbit control. SBUDNIC used an Arduino to run its control software in different ways at the same time, making sure it operated properly.
The satellite circled Earth for well over a year, working at an altitude of 323 miles (520 kilometers), higher than the International Space Station. The team didn’t receive any images or telemetry from the satellite, which was a big disappointment, but SBUDNIC exceeded expectations when it came to its altitude and orbit control system. For this, the team created a drag sail from regular Kapton tape, and it worked remarkably well, lowering the cubesat far quicker than anticipated.
Why they did it
An early satellite from the university, called EQUiSat, performed 14,000 orbits of Earth before reentering the atmosphere four years ago; the difference between the two is that SBUDNIC was made almost entirely from materials not meant for use in space. For this latest project, the team aspired to achieve one of the most rapid sketch-to-launch developments of a 3U cubesat.
Selia Jindal, one of the project leads, said many of the challenges encountered during development were similar to those brought on by the covid-19 pandemic. Numerous industries faced disrupted supply chains and complete upheaval, leading to a heavy reliance on online operations. At the same time, it’s clear that we are living in the age of billionaire space enthusiasts. Jindal and her colleagues wondered: “Is space something we can access, and if so how, how can we do it in the face of all of these shortages?” she said. “Can someone access space as a non-billionaire, or as someone without access to a GDP like NASA does with the United States? And can small players really get in the game, and if they can, how can they do it?”
Accordingly, the team strove to showcase a practical, cost-effective way to reach space—and, not content to stop there, they demonstrated a method of reducing space debris.
Why they’re a winner
The SBUDNIC team designed and built a satellite within one year and tested a drag sail technology. They also deserve credit for making the design open source: “So if anybody wants to go out and build SBUDNIC 2.0 or whatever they can—that’s the point,” said Marco Cross, the project’s chief engineer. “We’ve broken the path through the snow so that somebody else can walk a little bit easier down the line than we did, which was our goal from the beginning.”
The drag sail tech is a critical component of spacecraft at a time when the global community seeks to reduce the amount of useless stuff in orbit; more than 25,000 objects larger than 4 inches (10 cm) are now zooming around above Earth, according to NASA. It often takes decades for a dead satellite to fall back into the atmosphere, but drag sails have the potential to dramatically expedite this process, reducing the risk of in-orbit collisions.
Without the benefit of a drag sail, it would have taken SBUDNIC roughly 25 to 27 years to deorbit. But the $40 sail, made from Kapton polyimide film, brought that down dramatically. SBUDNIC bit the atmospheric dust on August 8, 2023, after just 445 days in orbit. The team thought it would take somewhere between six to seven years to drop.
They also did the required testing and followed all the rules. For example, the team conducted vacuum and vibration tests and used reptile heating lamps in a vacuum chamber to test the thermal shield they developed, which protected the satellite’s electronics from solar radiation. The project “required some people to work a lot to meet the deadlines, because standards don’t change,” Ganjikunta explained, making note of the documentation and testing requirements. “All that stuff is the same for student satellites or large satellite operators with billion-dollar budgets,” he added.
What’s next
Now, they intend to present their findings at conferences, submit data to publications, and organize a series of presentations in schools throughout Rhode Island.
“We’re currently building an open-source database for our project materials,” said Ganjikunta. “We’re still sanitizing and ensuring approval for public release. Once available, this will allow open access to our testing data and satellite code.”
Cross now assists with teaching the class where it all began, helping Brown University professor Rick Fleeter in administering and teaching. Cross said he’s inspired by the fact that, over the years, many students from this class have pursued careers in the space industry.
The team
The SBUDNIC team, under the leadership of Brown alumnus Marco Cross and faculty member Rick Fleeter, consisted of around 40 undergraduate and graduate students from Brown University’s School of Engineering, including lead program manager Dheraj Ganjikunta and project lead Selia Jindal. The team was academically diverse, with about half the students from the School of Engineering and the rest from a variety of disciplines including economics, international relations, and sculpture. SBUDNIC was born out of Fleeter’s “Design of Space Systems” class (ENGN1760), and it received significant support from key sponsors and supporters such as the National Research Council of Italy, D-Orbit, AMSAT-Italy, La Sapienza-University of Rome, and NASA’s Rhode Island Space Grant.
Click here to see all of the winners of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair.
