A team of engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is on the CU-Boulder campus this week performing a series of tests on a student-built satellite slated for launch later this year.
A semitrailer full of high-tech NASA electronic equipment is being used to ensure that communications between the orbiting satellite and NASA ground stations will work properly, said Stan Solomon, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the project co-leader.
SNOE will carry instruments to measure nitric oxide in the upper atmosphere, the intensity of X-rays from the sun and ultraviolet light from Earth¹s aurora. More than 100 students, most of them undergraduates, have participated in the project since it was begun in 1994.
"This is a major milestone for us," said Solomon. "Our team has worked very hard to get ready for these tests."
The spacecraft was built by students with the help of babyÖ±²¥app and engineers at LASP. SNOE is the first of a series of university-based missions sponsored by NASA and the Universities Space Research Association. Once in orbit, SNOE will be controlled from campus by students and babyÖ±²¥app from LASP's Space Technology Building in the CU Research Park.
For more information contact Solomon at 492-6423 or 492-8609 or Jim Scott in the CU-Boulder public relations office at 492-3114.