Real Science, Real Education: The University Nanosat Program

The University Nanosat Program (UNP) is a two year small satellite competition held among leading universities across the nation. In the past 12 years, UNP has involved 27 universities and over 5000 students in a variety of engineering fields and other disciplines, in the process of designing and managing the development of a satellite. The UNP is a partnership between the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The program’s primary purpose is to help train engineering students in satellite design, fabrication, and testing by requiring them to build the satellite themselves through the mentorship of their Principle Investigator, industry mentors, and a series of six program reviews managed by the AFRL Program Office. Each university-built satellite attempts to further a specific technology or perform a scientific mission. Technologies advanced through the program include all aspects of small satellite designs including structures, propulsion, imaging, and navigation and have helped further science payloads such as energetic particle detectors, plasma probes, photometers, and many others. This paper will discuss the educational impact on students involved in a hands-on, hardware focused program. The paper will also address the recent launch of FASTRAC, the Nanosat-3 (NS-3) competition cycle winner built by the University of Texas at Austin, the upcoming launch of CUSAT, the NS-4 winner built by Cornell University; as well as the NS-5 winner DANDE built by the University of Colorado - Boulder. It will discuss the program’s design philosophy as well as the challenges in creating space flight hardware with a small budget on a student schedule. Finally, the article will discuss some of the upcoming changes in the program such as the acceptance of CubeSats as equal competitors with the standard 50 kg nanosatellites