Next September, NASA will send high-altitude
balloons into the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere as part of an
effort to collect data on cosmic radiation. If all goes as planned, one
of the balloons will be attached to a satellite designed by students at a
unique class at the University of Virginia.
For the past two years, the Spacecraft Design
course at UVa, led by associate professor Christopher P. Goyne, has been
working on just one project — a satellite he hopes to eventually launch
into space. Goyne, who’s always looking for ways to help his students
get practical experience, was also hoping for some outlet to test his
project.
NASA provided a chance to do
both. The agency has been reaching out to college space programs,
offering the chance to fly student experiments to the edge of space
using high-altitude balloons.
“Doing a balloon flight is sort of a stepping stone to space flight,” Goyne said.
Ultimately, Goyne is hoping to
build a satellite that uses a smartphone as the flight computer. He said
he wanted to use a device that most students are familiar with, and
show how relatively cheap everyday objects can be used in unusual ways.
“Smartphones have more
processing power than early satellites,” Goyne said. “Smartphones are a
technology everybody knows … it just seemed like a natural progression.”
Next year’s exercise is part of
NASA’s effort to learn more about cosmic radiation, a form of radiation
people are exposed to whenever they fly at high altitudes.
Goyne’s students are putting
together a modified version of their own satellite for the NASA flight,
one that has the equipment to detect the amount of radiation at that
altitude.
Goyne said a typical commercial
flight exposes passengers to the same amount of radiation they’d be
exposed to getting a chest X-ray. That’s not a dangerous amount for most
people, he said, but scientists are worried about the effect on flight
crews and astronauts.
Levels of cosmic radiation
change day-to-day and can be influenced by certain events, such as solar
storms. NASA is eventually hoping to find ways to predict cosmic
radiation levels, allowing pilots to fly around certain hotspots.
“It’s just like avoiding a bad
storm,” said Christina Gilligan, one of 30 students in Goyne’s class.
Gilligan is overseeing the team in charge of putting radiation detection
equipment on the satellite.
Bryan Dale, an aerospace
engineering major in the class, said the students will have to meet
NASA’s rigorous standards and deadlines.
But it’s worth it for Dale, who said he’s thrilled at the prospect of designing something that could be used by NASA.
“It’s something I never thought I’d be involved in, especially at the undergraduate level,” he said.
Derek Quizon
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