Development of a Small University Satellite for Performing a Global Survey of Gravity Waves in the Mesosphere

154 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008.Understanding the dynamics and energy transfer within the atmosphere is important for a broad range of applications including communication, navigation, space travel, weather, and climate change. However, space weather research is currently limited by a lack of essential space measurements. Access to space has not been low cost. The Illinois Observing Nanosatellite (ION) represents an innovative approach to acquiring some critical measurements. ION incorporates remote sensing capabilities built by students as part of the CubeSat program (1 to 3 kg satellites) using a set of guidelines tailored to a university educational environment. The recent rapid increase in CubeSat launches (32 launched, 18 in space as of 2007) combined with scientific measurement demonstrations has given atmospheric researchers hope that university satellites can help fill measurement needs. The results of this work demonstrate that university satellites, including CubeSats, offer the potential for harvesting a great breadth of atmospheric data, while simultaneously advancing space technology and educating the next generation of spacecraft engineers.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD