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Header Image: Robert Marshall and PhD student Wyatt Spies checking out AEPEX while wearing protective gear to prevent damage to the satellite.
Above: Robert Marshall, third from left, with members of his lab and the LASP SmallSat Team.

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���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ faculty and students have been part of than 24 small satellite projects. Find out more about all of our missions.

Three University of Colorado Boulder small satellites are ready to rocket into space.

Designed, built, and tested on campus, all three projects are led by Robert Marshall, an associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.

“We’ve designed and built each of these missions completely from scratch. I’m very proud of the entire team. I don’t know how to describe it, going from the idea of a mission, to a proposal, then construction, resolving problems along the way, and now getting to launch,” Marshall said.

The satellites, AEPEX, CANVAS, and COSMO, will serve separate missions, but each are CubeSats, so-named for their small size. CANVAS is roughly the size and shape of a loaf of bread. The two other satellites are the size of a large shoebox.��

Satellite building used to exclusively be the domain of major aerospace companies, often costing hundreds of millions of dollars each and weighing in at thousands of pounds. Advancing technology has made CubeSats’ much smaller profiles practical.��

They have more limited missions, but also radically reduce costs; COSMO is the most expensive of the three, at $6.4 million. Additionally, as university projects, they offer the chance for students to be heavily involved.

“Students bring a lot of excitement,” Marshall said. “We’ve had over 60 students involved in developing these missions, including undergrads, masters, and PhDs.”

Jacob Mesley, a 2nd year aerospace master’s student, has been part of that COSMO team.

“I’m just so grateful for this opportunity, sometimes I can still hardly believe it. If you told me three years ago that I would end up working on hardware that’s going to be orbiting Earth so soon, I would have likely not believed you,” Mesley said.

All of the CubeSats will launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. AEPEX and COSMO are slated for the same SpaceX rocket, likely to take off in late March. CANVAS will follow a few weeks later, aboard a Northrop Grumman rocket.��

Once in space, the next phase for the satellites begins.

“The real mission research doesn’t happen until after the launch. We develop the satellites, but the ultimate goal is the science you can do with them in orbit,” Marshall said.��

Each satellite has a very different science mission:

• (Atmospheric Effects of Precipitation through Energetic X-rays)��– Will investigate highly energetic electrons that fall into Earth’s atmosphere from the Van Allen radiation belts by measuring X-rays that are produced in the atmosphere. These electrons impact atmospheric ozone balance and satellite communications.
• (Climatology of Anthropogenic and Natural VLF wave Activity in Space) – Will map the transmission into space of Very Low Frequency energy generated by lightning strikes and ground-based radio transmitters, which have a significant impact on the near-Earth radiation environment.
• (COmpact Spaceborne Magnetic Observatory) – Will conduct high accuracy measurements of Earth’s magnetic field, providing essential information for navigation.

“It’s very exciting to get to this point. The science missions last from six months to three years, and we hope to extend some of them if we’re able to get funding. More data is always better to improve our understanding,” Marshall said.

Additional key leadership on all three satellites came from Conor Cunningham, Siwani Regmi, and Sebastian Wankmueller, all professional research associates in Marshall’s lab, as well as the SmallSat team at the who have led aspects of the spacecraft design and will operate each of the spacecraft once in orbit.

AEPEX

CANVAS

COSMO