COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Aggie aerospace engineers are spending their Spring Breaks driving "Petey" to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

But Petey won't be touring the museum. He'll be living in it from now on as part of the museum's permanent collection.

Petey, a satellite built by students at Arizona State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and New Mexico State University, is a piece of history that has been guiding Aggie aerospace engineers in their quest to build their own satellite, AggieSat1.

Petey, named for New Mexico State's mascot, was one of three nanosatellites of the Three Corner Sat mission. Petey's mates, Ralphie (named for Colorado's mascot) and Sparky (ASU's mascot) were launched on the back of a Delta-4 rocket in December 2004 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Petey skipped the launch because of space considerations on the rocket, but he's been guiding the Aggies' own satellite program since.

"What an honor to see students' hard work and innovation selected for the National Air and Space Museum collection," said Dr. Helen Reed, head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M and principal investigator for the Three Corner Sat mission.

Reed instituted the ASU Student Satellite Program in 1993 and brought her unique educational program with her to Texas A&M in 2004. A space education pioneer, Reed has created AggieSat Lab Student Satellite Program and is now supervising Aggies as they work toward the launch of their first satellite, AggieSat1, in 2007.

Reed said that AggieSat1 is being built on what was learned at ASU. The Aggie aerospace engineering students working on the satellite are modifying Petey's design, which will conduct three scientific experiments: a bio-fuel cell in which simple proteins are used to produce power from sugar (glucose) and oxygen; a propulsion system that uses water as the fuel; and a shape-memory-alloy actuator, a simple versatile miniature pointing device (to point a camera, for instance).

But the ultimate goal of AggieSat1 is to test a responsive space platform that would allow engineers to plan and launch a satellite in a few days instead of several years.

"The idea is to have these boxes, or modules, for experiments," said aerospace engineering Ph.D. student and AggieSat1 project manager Libby Osgood. "You can pop a module into a satellite depending on what you want to test in space, and then launch the satellite in just a few days."

The AggieSat1 team is made up of four graduate students and about 80 undergraduate students from 12 different majors, including 20 undergraduate business and education majors who form the project's business division.

Reed said, "Building a small satellite is like running a small company. Besides engineers, we need people to do data analysis, marketing and cost-benefit analysis, purchasing, accounting, management, communications -- everything. "

Sophomore aerospace engineering major Devin Stancliffe said he has benefited from working on the AggieSat1 project.

"We learn so much more than just theory," he said. "We actually get to build a satellite!"

Osgood added, "This project integrates design, building and testing, which is pretty rare in industry where you focus on a single area of a project."

For more information, visit http://aggiesat.org.

For more information, contact

Source: Dr. Helen Reed
979/458-2158

helen.reed@tamu.edu

Reporter: Lesley Kriewald
lesleyk@tamu.edu
(979) 845-5524

News Story 1305, March 13, 2006

Direct page link:
http://engineeringnews.tamu.edu/news/1305

Main News Page