CSUN's CubeSat Launches from ISS and Contributes to NASA Research:

Many CubeSats are like prodigal children when launched from the International Space Station into Earth's orbit: The miniature satellites leave home and are never heard from again. Not CSUNSat1. This mini satellite has performed like a dutiful child this summer, calling home at least twice a day to California State University, Northridge and doing all of its homework. After months of preparation and waiting, on April 18, electrical and computer engineering professors Sharlene Katz and James Flynn and their students cheered with relief as NASA launched CSUNSat1, the university's first stellar explorer, to the International Space Station (ISS). The cube-shaped satellite is about the size of a shoebox and launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the OA-7 Cygnus spacecraft SS John Glenn, propelled by an Atlas V rocket. It took four days to reach the space station, where astronauts unloaded and prepared the satellite and other payload for deployment. In mid-May, Katz and Flynn got word that NASA was ready to launch CSUNSat1 into orbit to start its mission. Then on May 18, the ISS crew deployed the mini satellite into low Earth orbit. Once it had safely cleared the massive space station, CSUNSat1 was allowed to power up and begin its mission operations and experiments. Later that night, the satellite made its first pass over the CSUN ground station, designed and built from scratch (like the CubeSat itself) in the corner of an electrical engineering lab in Jacaranda Hall. It was a tense and historic moment for CSUN. Katz and Flynn waited quietly in the ground station with several of the more than 70 students who have worked for four years to bring this project to life -- and to orbit. The device was designed in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena to test the effectiveness of JPL's energy storage system to help explore deep space in extremely cold temperatures. At 11:21 p.m., CSUNSat1 came up over the horizon, within range of the large, custom-built antenna on the roof of Jacaranda Hall. Katz, Flynn and their students and alumni held their breath. Then, they heard it: the first contact from the beacon, the long and short tones of International Morse Code. In addition to programming it to send data back to CSUN, the engineering team had built the satellite to broadcast its status every three minutes as it circles Earth, using Morse Code. "It is unfortunate that many CubeSats go up there, and they're never heard from. You can imagine how those students and researchers must feel," Flynn said. "It's like sending your child into the world, and it doesn't write home. You never know what happened to it. [When I heard the beacon], I felt like eight tons was off my shoulders. I was elated." "It [broadcasts] a letter B at the beginning of the beacon that tells us the experiment is ready to be run," added Katz, who noted that she and Flynn chose old-school Morse Code for the stellar traveler because it works when computerized data fails -- and because both professors happen to be fluent in Morse Code, thanks to a passion for ham radio in their teen years.

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