Cadets will watch their engineering efforts blast into space this afternoon, televised live from a tropical island to the snow-laden Air Force Academy. The cadet-built satellite, FalconSAT-2, is scheduled for launch starting today at 2 p.m. MST from the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site on Kwajalien Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.
Previous launch attempts in November and January were cancelled, due to difficulties with the commercial rocket carrying the satellite.
Once it is released into orbit, cadets will then take control of FalconSAT-2 via the Academy’s ground control station, and gather scientific data.
This satellite is the product of the Academy’s Space Systems Research Center. The center runs a multi-disciplinary, two-semester astronautical engineering course where cadets put theory into practice by designing and constructing a small satellite for Department of Defense research programs. FalconSAT-2’s mission is to measure space plasma phenomena in the lower ionosphere, which can adversely affect space-based communications, including the Global Positioning System and other civil and military communications.
FalconSAT-2 was originally slated for launched aboard a space shuttle in early 2003. But the Columbia disaster put that launch on hold until the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency arranged for FalconSAT-2 to be part of the payload for the inaugural launch of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation’s Falcon I rocket
Meanwhile, the Space Systems Research Center’s cadets are busy constructing the flight model of the center’s fourth satellite, FalconSAT-3. That satellite has a launch date of September, 2006. Cadets are also beginning conceptual design for a fifth satellite during this academic year.
