| Welcome
to the University of Minnesota's University Nanosat-5 Project website. This website
is designed to allow the public access to our efforts in the University Nanosat-5
competition.
News:
We are recruiting students to work on Nanosat-5! Please contact Ellie Field, fiel0140@umn.edu, to join the team.
History:
Before Nanosat-5, the University of Minnesota designed a satellite for the Nanosat-4 competition. The Nanosat-4 satellite, Minnesat, was constructed to do an experiment to determine its attitude using GPS data. The attitude of a satellite is a very important measurement, which describes the direction that the satellite is pointing. Very accurate attitude measurements are necessary on satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope, which has to precisely point at faraway objects in order to view them. Although a GPS attitude determination system may not be accurate enough for the Hubble Space Telescope, it is a cheaper alternative for satellites where an accurate attitude determination system is less critical. So far, satellites still rely on expensive sensors to determine attitude. The attitude determination system on Nanosat-4 instead utilizes less expensive, off-the-shelf GPS equipment. Since most satellites already use GPS for navigation, the equipment needed to determine attitude from GPS is already widely used.
Minnesat placed 5th overall out of 11 universities at the end of the Nanosat-4 competition. This is an exciting finish because the University of Minnesota was not involved in the Nanosat program prior to Nanosat-4. We have learned a lot from Nanosat-4 and look forward to applying this knowledge to Nanosat-5.
You can find more information about Nanosat-4 here.
Contact:
Project Manager: Ellie Field, field0140 (AT) umn.edu
Principle Investigator: Prof. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher, gebre (AT) aem.umn.edu
Address:
107 Akerman Mall
110 Union Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Labs: Akerman Hall rooms 20 and 401
Sponsors:
EMJ metals
Goodrich
Honeywell
Lockheed Martin
Tennant
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