A team of engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is on the CU-Boulder campus this week performing a series of tests on a student-built satellite slated for launch later this year.
A semitrailer full of high-tech NASA electronic equipment is being used to ensure that communications between the orbiting satellite and NASA ground stations will work properly, said Stan Solomon, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the project co-leader.
SNOE will carry instruments to measure nitric oxide in the upper atmosphere, the intensity of X-rays from the sun and ultraviolet light from Earth¹s aurora. More than 100 students, most of them undergraduates, have participated in the project since it was begun in 1994.
"This is a major milestone for us," said Solomon. "Our team has worked very hard to get ready for these tests."
The spacecraft was built by students with the help of faculty and engineers at LASP. SNOE is the first of a series of university-based missions sponsored by NASA and the Universities Space Research Association. Once in orbit, SNOE will be controlled from campus by students and faculty from LASP's Space Technology Building in the CU Research Park.
For more information contact Solomon at 492-6423 or 492-8609 or Jim Scott in the CU-Boulder public relations office at 492-3114.