3CS 2 (Ralphie)

Launch data: Designation  04050 Launch date  21 Dec 2004 - 21:50 UT Launch site  CC, SLC-37B Launch vehicle  Delta-4 Heavy Mission  Imaging Earth orbit on: Perigee / Apogee  105 x 105 km Inclination  28° Period   min

Description:

3CSat (Three Corner Satellite) is a satellite project, designed and being built by mostly undergraduate students at three universities:

• Arizona State University (ASU) - structure, power and attitude system
• Colorado University, Boulder (CU) - imaging and End-to-End Data Systems
• New Mexico State University (NMSU) - communication system

The Three corner Sat payload was to fly as a secondary payload on the NASA Space Shuttle Orbiter, but has been changed to a piggy back launch on the maiden flight of the Delta-4H rocket. The mission is made up of three primary and three secondary mission objectives all to be accomplished under the current schedule.

The primary missions include:

• stereoscopic imaging,
• formation flying, and
• end-to-end command and data handling.

The science will include stereoscopic imaging of clouds and other atmospheric structures using a satellite formation. This will be accomplished while using virtual formation communications, a technology that allows satellites to operate as a network utilizing communication and data links. Finally, the formation will use distributed and automated operations in the innovative and and data handling system. This allows both the individual S/C and the formation to reconfigure themselves for optimum data gathering, command/control, communication.

The secondary missions include demonstrating micropropulsion, demonstrating a generic S/C bus design, and emphasizing student education. The micropropulsion experiment will be used to increase the altitude of the satellites allowing an extended mission lifetime and greater data gathering capacity. This system, under development at AFRL/Edwards AFB, ASU, and JPL will be an important pioneer for future small S/C propulsion. The S/C bus is a modular. Easily configurable design, allowing one to fly multiple science payloads with minimal modifications to the structure and configuration. This program will additionally emphasize student education as students actively participate in program management, design, manufacturing, testing, and operational aspects.

Sparky and Ralphie will be dropped off at a low 180 x 240 km orbit and are due to reenter in 2-3 days.

The Nanosats were deployed, but failed to communicate with the ground station, possibly due to drained batteries.