The Promise of Innovation from University Space Systems- Are We M

SSC09-XII-03 The Promise of Innovation from University Space Systems: Are We Meeting It? Michael Swartwout St Louis University 3450 Lindell Boulevard St Louis, Missouri 63103; (314) 977-8240 mswartwout@asl.wustl.edu ABSTRACT A popular notion among universities is that we are innovation-drivers in the staid, risk-adverse spacecraft industry – we are to professional small satellites what small satellites are to the “battlestars” By contrast, professional industry takes a much different perspective on university-class spacecraft; these programs are good for attracting students to space and providing valuable pre-career training, but the actual flight missions are ancillary, even unimportant Which opinion is correct? Both are correct The vast majority of the 111 student-built spacecraft that have flown have made no innovative contributions That is not to say that they have been without contribution In addition to the inarguable benefits to education, many have served as radio Amateur communications, science experiments and even technological demonstrations But “innovative”? Not so much However, there have been two innovative contributors, whose contributions are large enough to settle the question: the University of Surrey begat SSTL, which helped create the COTS-based small satellite industry Stanford and Cal Poly begat CubeSats, whose contributions are still being created today This paper provides an update to our earlier submissions on the history of student-built spacecraft Major trends identified in previous years will be re-examined with new data especially the bifurcation between larger-scale, larger-scope "flagship" programs and small-scale, reduced-mission "independents" In particular, we will demonstrate that the general history of student-built spacecraft has not been one of innovation, nor of development of new space systems with those few, extremely noteworthy, exceptions We will assess why these innovations have not surfaced, and what can be done to change that situation if indeed it can (or should) be changed opinion (one shared by many) student experiments, are “nice”, but a “luxury” that must give way to other NASA priorities INTRODUCTION If one were to pick up past proceedings of this conference and read the papers covering universityclass missions, one could not help but notice the pervading sense of optimism Student authors often believe that their work will lead to breakthroughs for small satellites, because student projects can afford to be more innovative and ambitious.1 This author speaks from experience, having co-written several of these ambitious, innovative student papers2-5 Which set of beliefs are true? Are student-built spacecraft valuable because of the technological innovation they provide, or because of the invaluable training they offer for future spacecraft professionals? We cannot hope to settle this matter in one conference paper, but we will attempt to bring rational tools to the discussion Specifically, we will draw upon the database of student-built spacecraft developed for previous conferences7-9 to attach numbers and specific examples to the debate If, instead, one were to canvass the exhibit booths of industry representatives at the conference, a different consensus would emerge The value of student-built spacecraft is not in the hardware, but in the experience developed by students Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin expressed a form of this view at the 2006 conference, when he stated, “As students you need to learn science and engineering and those disciplines, and then you need to get out among companies or laboratories and continue to learn your trade.”6 In his Swartwout Secondary Objective: Review the Flight Data In fact, updating the database will be a useful exercise in itself As we noted in earlier papers, this is a “golden age” of student-built spacecraft Since 1981, one hundred eleven student spacecraft have launched, with 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites nearly half (54) coming in the past five years Twenty more are already scheduled to launch in the next nine months Next, we have identified two broad categories of schools building flight hardware: flagship schools and independent schools We define a flagship university as one designated by its government as a national center for spacecraft engineering research and development Independent schools are all the remaining universities Unfortunately, other trends noted in earlier papers have continued, too While there are more first-time university programs flying spacecraft than ever before (26 since 2005), only the government-sponsored “flagship” schools tend to have two or more spacecraft (twelve active flagships with multiple spacecraft, compared to only three active independents) The flagship schools also have a disproportionate advantage in mission success and mission value By definition, flagships enjoy financial sponsorship, access to facilities and launch opportunities that the independent schools not And these differences have a profound effect: as will be shown there is a disparity in both launch rates and mission success between the two classes; generally speaking, flagship schools build bigger satellites with more “useful” payloads, and tend to have sustained programs with multiple launches over many years By contrast, the satellites built by independent schools are three times more likely to fail, and for most of these programs, their first-ever spacecraft in orbit is also their last, i.e., the financial, administrative and student resources that were gathered together to built the first satellite are not available for the second Overview of the Paper For this paper, we will begin by updating the tables and figures from previous papers, identifying changes or emerging trends in terms of size, performance or the balance of flagship and independent schools From there, we will focus our attention on innovation from university-class missions We will show that universities have been responsible for one significant innovation – the CubeSat standard – which alone is probably sufficient to consider universities to be innovators We will also show that, apart from the CubeSat, universities have not delivered innovative technologies or missions, but rather their value has been in training students Disclaimers This information was compiled from online sources, past conference proceedings and author interviews with students and faculty at many universities, as noted in the references The opinions expressed in this paper are just that, opinions, reflecting the author’s experience as both student project manager and faculty advisor to university-class projects The author accepts sole responsibility for any factual (or interpretative) errors found in this paper and welcomes any corrections But first, we need to define our terms Definitions As discussed in a previous paper,1 we restrict our study to university-class satellites, which we narrowly require to have three distinct features: UNIVERSITY-CLASS MANIFEST, UPDATED A list of university-class spacecraft launched from 1981 until the submission of this paper (June 2009) are split between in Table and Table 2, including the eight that are on “official” manifests for 2009 Because the inclusion or omission of a spacecraft from this list may prove to be a contentious issue – not to mention the designation of whether a vehicle failed prematurely, it is worth repeating an explanation of the process for creating these tables It is a functional spacecraft, rather than a payload instrument or component To fit the definition, the device must operate in space with its own independent means of communications and command However, self-contained objects that are attached to other vehicles are allowed under this definition (e.g PCSat-2, Pehuensat-1) Untrained personnel (i.e students) performed a significant fraction of key design decisions, integration & testing, and flight operations The training of these people was as important as (if not more important) the nominal “mission” of the spacecraft itself First, using launch logs, the author’s knowledge and several satellite databases, a list was created of all university-class small satellites that were placed on a rocket.10-14 These remaining spacecraft were researched regarding mission duration, mass and mission categories, with information derived from published reports and project websites as indicated A T-class (technology) mission flight-tests a component or subsystem that is new to the satellite industry (not just new to the university) An S–class (science) mission creates science data relevant to that particular field of Again, exclusion from the “university class” category does not imply a lack of educational value on a project’s part; it simply indicates that other factors were more important than student education (e.g., schedule or on-orbit performance) Swartwout 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites study (including remote sensing) A C-class (communications) mission provides communications services to some part of the world (often in the Amateur radio service) While every university-class mission is by definition educational, those spacecraft listed as E-class (education) missions lack any of the other payloads and serve mainly to train students and improve the satellite-building capabilities of that particular school; typical E-class payloads are COTS imagers (low-resolution Earth imagery), on-board telemetry, and beacon communications Finally, a spacecraft is indicated to have failed prematurely when its operational lifetime was significantly less than published reports predicted and/or if the university who created the spacecraft indicates that it failed When in doubt, the database from the Union of Concerned Scientists was used to determine when a spacecraft ceased operations.14 This list of spacecraft is complete to the best of the author’s ability The caveats from previous versions of this work still apply: launch masses should be considered approximate, as should mission durations Swartwout 52 60 52 16 35 49 154 48 45 63 50 10 10 18 187 70 70 41 64 45 110 191 52 23 0.2 0.5 0.5 49 50 10 10 12 20 12 47 10 17 1 1 100 64 96 281 20 96 210 77 96 11 0.5 0.1 46 20 51 60 33 23 120 55 1.0 1.0 0.0 29 0 30 39 36 27 24 36 92 92 78 24 61 71 71 68 68 N N N N N N F N F N LF LF F N N N N N N N F N A N F F F N F F F N N N N N N N S A A N N S A F F F A A Type UK UK USA USA Germany Korea France Korea Germany Germany Israel Mexico Mexico USA Europe Russia Germany Germany Israel USA USA South Africa Germany Korea USA USA USA USA USA USA USA China Malaysia Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Italy Sweden USA USA Germany Saudi Arabia Italy USA Japan Japan Canada Denmark Denmark Korea Russia Status University of Surrey University of Surrey Weber State, Utah State University Weber State Technical University of Berlin Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology CNES Amateurs (?) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Technical University of Berlin University of Bremen Technion Institute of Technology National University of Mexico National University of Mexico US Air Force Academy ESA/ESTEC-led partnership Russian high school students Technical University of Berlin Technical University of Berlin Technion Institute of Technology Naval Postgraduate School University of Alabama, Huntsville University of Stellenbosch Technical University of Berlin Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Weber State, USAFA US Air Force Academy Arizona State University Stanford University Santa Clara University Santa Clara University Santa Clara University Tsinghua University ATSB King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology University of Rome "La Sapienza" Umeå University / Luleå University of Technology Stanford, USNA, Washington University US Naval Academy Technical University of Berlin King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology University of Rome "La Sapienza" Stanford University Tokyo Institute of Technology University of Tokyo University of Toronto University of Aalborg Technical University of Denmark Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Mozhaisky military academy Mission Duration (months) UoSAT-1 (UO-9) UoSAT-2 (UO-11) NUSAT WeberSAT (WO-18) TUBSAT-A KITSAT-1 (KO-23) ARSENE KITSAT-2 (KO-25) TUBSAT-B BremSat Techsat 1-A UNAMSAT-A UNAMSAT-B (MO-30) Falcon Gold YES RS-17 TUBSAT-N TUBSAT-N1 Techsat 1-B (GO-32) PANSAT (PO-34) SEDSAT (SO-33) Sunsat (SO-35) DLR-TUBSAT KITSAT-3 JAW SAT (WO-39) Falconsat ASUsat (AO-37) Opal (OO-38) JAK Louise Thelma Tsinghua-1 TiungSAT-1 (MO-46) Saudisat 1A (SO-41) Saudisat 1B (SO-42) UNISAT Munin Sapphire (NO-45) PCSat (NO-44) Maroc-TUBSAT Saudisat 1C (SO-50) UNISAT QuakeSat CUTE-1 (CO-55) XI-IV (CO-57) CanX-1 AAU Cubesat DTUsat STSAT-1 Mozhayets (RS-22) Mass (kg) Nation 10/6/1981 3/1/1984 4/29/1985 1/22/1990 7/17/1991 8/10/1992 5/12/1993 10/26/1993 1/25/1994 3/2/1994 8/28/1995 8/28/1995 5/9/1996 10/25/1997 10/30/1997 11/3/1997 7/7/1998 7/7/1998 7/10/1998 10/30/1998 10/30/1998 2/23/1999 5/27/1999 5/27/1999 1/27/2000 1/27/2000 1/27/2000 1/27/2000 2/10/2000 2/12/2000 2/12/2000 6/28/2000 9/26/2000 9/26/2000 9/26/2000 9/26/2000 11/21/2000 9/30/2001 9/30/2001 10/12/2001 12/20/2002 12/20/2002 6/30/2003 6/30/2003 6/30/2003 6/30/2003 6/30/2003 6/30/2003 9/27/2003 9/27/2003 Prim ary School(s) 10 11 11 12 13 14 15 16 16 17 18 18 19 20 20 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 22 23 23 23 23 24 25 25 26 27 27 28 28 28 28 28 28 29 29 Mission 1981 1984 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1993 1994 1994 1995 1995 1996 1997 1997 1997 1998 1998 1998 1998 1998 1999 1999 1999 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2001 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2003 2003 2003 2003 2003 2003 Launch Date Launch Launch ID Table 1: University-Class Spacecraft Launched From 1981 to 200310-14 S C T C C T C C T S C C C T E E T T S C T C S T T E E T E S S E S C C E S E C S C E S E E E E E T C 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites Swartwout Naxing-1 (NS-1) Tsinghua University SaudiSat King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology SaudiComsat-1 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology SaudiComsat-2 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology UNISAT University of Rome "La Sapienza" 3CS: Sparky ASU/NMSU/CU Boulder 3CS: Ralphie ASU/NMSU/CU Boulder PCSat US Naval Academy XI-V (CO-58) University of Tokyo Mozhayets Mozhaisky military academy UWE-1 University of Würzburg Ncube II Norwegian Universities SSETI Express (XO-53) European Universities CUTE-1.7 (CO-56) Tokyo Institute of Technology Falconsat US Air Force Academy UNISAT University of Rome "La Sapienza" Ncube Norwegian Universites KUTESat University of Kansas CP2 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo CP1 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo ION University of Illinois ICE CUBE1 Cornell University ICE CUBE2 Cornell University PiCPoT Politecnico di Torino, Italy SEEDS Nihon University SACRED University of Arizona Rincon University of Arizona MEROPE Montana State University HAUSAT-1 Hankuk Aviation University Baumanets Bauman Moscow State Technical University HITSat (HO-59) Hokkaido Institute of Technology RAFT-1 (NO-60) US Naval Academy MARScom US Naval Academy ANDE (NO-61) US Naval Academy LAPAN-Tubsat Technical University of Berlin PEHUENSAT-1 (PO-63) National University of Comahue Falconsat US Air Force Academy MidSTAR-1 US Naval Academy Saudi ComSat-3 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology Saudi ComSat-4 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology Saudi ComSat-5 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology Saudi ComSat-6 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology Saudi ComSat-7 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology CP4 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo CP3 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Libertad-1 University of Sergio Arboleda CAPE-1 University of Louisiana YES2/Floyd ESA-led partnership Yes2/Fotino ESA-led partnership Cute 1.7 + APD II (CO-65Tokyo Institute of Technology CanX University of Toronto AAU-CubeSat II University of Aalborg SEEDS (CO-66) Nihon University COMPASS Fachhochschule Aachen Delfi-C3 (DO-64) Technical University of Delft SpriteSat (Raijin) Tohoku University PRISM University of Tokyo KKS Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology STARS Kagawa University ANUSAT Anna University CP6 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo InnoSat ATSB CubeSAT ATSB UWE-2 University of Würzburg SwissCube-1 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne BeeSat Technical University of Berlin ITU-pSat Istanbul Technical University SumbandilaSat University of Stellenbosch UGATUSAT Ufa State Aviation Technical University China Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Italy USA USA USA Japan Russia Germany Norway Europe Japan USA Italy Norway USA USA USA USA USA USA Italy Japan USA USA USA S Korea Russia Japan USA USA USA Germany Argentina USA USA Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia USA USA Columbia USA Europe Europe Japan Canada Denmark Japan Germany Netherlands Japan Japan Japan Japan India USA Malaysia Malaysia Germany Switzerland Germany Turkey South Africa Russia 25 15 12 12 12 16 16 12 64 1 62 10 20 12 1 1 1 2.5 1 1 92 2.7 1 75 56 54 120 12 12 12 12 12 1 1 30 2 1 50 8 38 4 1 1 80 30 Type Mass (kg) Nation Primary School(s) Mission Launch Date 4/18/2004 6/29/2004 6/29/2004 6/29/2004 6/29/2004 12/21/2004 12/21/2004 8/3/2005 10/27/2005 10/27/2005 10/27/2005 10/27/2005 10/27/2005 2/21/2006 3/24/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 7/26/2006 9/22/2006 12/21/2006 12/21/2006 12/21/2006 1/10/2007 1/10/2007 3/9/2007 3/9/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 4/17/2007 9/25/2007 9/25/2007 4/28/2008 4/28/2008 4/28/2008 4/28/2008 4/28/2008 4/28/2008 1/23/2009 1/23/2009 1/23/2009 1/23/2009 4/20/2009 5/19/2009 7/13/2009 7/13/2009 7/14/2009 7/14/2009 7/14/2009 7/14/2009 7/31/2009 7/31/2009 Status 30 31 31 31 31 32 32 33 34 34 34 34 34 35 36 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 38 39 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 43 43 44 44 44 44 44 44 45 45 45 45 46 47 48 48 49 49 49 49 50 50 Mission Duration (months) 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2005 2005 2005 2005 2005 2005 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2006 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 Launch ID Launch Table 2: University-Class Spacecraft Launched (or Manifested) From 2004 to 2009 62 59 59 59 59 13 43 0 5 12 29 27 27 26 26 26 26 26 5 0 13 13 13 13 13 13 0 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a A A A A A LF LF N S F F F F F LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF LF N N N N A N A A A A A A A N N N N N F A A A A S S F A F F A A - T S C C T E E C E E E E C C S E E E E E T T T E E E E S E E C C C C C C S T C C C C C E E E E T T E T T E E T S T T T C E T T E S T E T T 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites OBSERVATIONS We gave extensive discussion of the lau launch manifest in previous papers, so we will only comm ment on emerging trends or follow up on previous question ions Updated: School status Based on our review of spacecra craft reports and conversations with project participant nts, the following schools have “graduated” from uni niversity-class to professional-class programs: University sity of Surrey (now SSTL), the University of Toronto’ o’s Space Flight Laboratory, and the Satellite Techn hnology Research Center (SaTReC) at the Korean Advan vanced Institute of Science and Technology All three of these programs advanced to the point that spac acecraft mission performance is a stronger driver than sstudent education (and, often, students are kept out off the critical path entirely) Similarly, we are keeping a close watch on the Technical University of Berlin15-119 and the King Abdulaziz City for Science & Tec echnology (Saudi Arabia); they appear to be close to grad aduation Figure 1: Total Number of Manifested University-Class Spacecra raft per Year Updated: Number crunching First of all, as shown in Figure 1, the significant increase in manifests noted in 2004 aand 2007 can be called a full-blown trend, and creditt m must be given to the CubeSat/P-POD launch system; m; as shown in Figure 2, (and especially in Figure 3), the smallest spacecraft account for the large increase ase in missions In 2007, we speculated that, with the bbacklog of firstgeneration CubeSats launched, we mig ight see a dropoff in the number of CubeSat missions s This has not happened Instead, we believe thatt an international manifest of at least a dozen university ity-class spacecraft per year should be expected for the iindefinite future, including six to ten CubeSats Figure 2: Spacecraft Launch ch Mass by Year Updated: Flagships vs Independents A second continuing trend is the preeminence of flagship schools in the manifest (Figu gure 4), with new flagships in India, Russia, Turkey aand Switzerland Flagship schools represent 54% of the he 119 manifested spacecraft through the end of 2009 (ro (roughly the same percentage as from previous years) Similarly, a few schools dominate the manifest (Figure re 6): since 2007, Tokyo, Tokyo Tech, Nihon and Toront nto each launched their second university-class spacecraft ft, ATSB its third, Cal Poly its fifth and Berlin its eight hth! All told, 14 flagships are now responsible for 56 university-class spacecraft, while nine independentss have flown 25 The other thirty-eight spacecraft have ccome from thirtyeight schools The complete list oof schools with manifested hardware is in Table Swartwout pacecraft Launched Figure 3: Aggregate Totals of Sp per Year Categorized d by b Mass 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference nce on Small Satellites Table 3: Spacefaring Unive iversities (Flagships Highlighed in Ye Yellow) School Nation First Launch Tot University of Surrey UK 10/6/1981 2 Weber State USA 4/29/1985 3 Utah State USA 4/29/1985 Technical University of Berlin Germany 7/17/1991 Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Korea 8/10/1992 CNES Amateurs (?) France 5/12/1993 University of Bremen Germany 3/2/1994 Technion Institute of Technology Israel 8/28/1995 National University of Mexico Mexico 8/28/1995 10 US Air Force Academy USA 10/25/1997 11 Russian high school students Russia 11/3/1997 12 Naval Postgraduate School USA 10/30/1998 13 University of Alabama, Huntsville USA 10/30/1998 14 University of Stellenbosch South Africa 2/23/1999 15 Arizona State University USA 1/27/2000 16 Stanford University USA 1/27/2000 17 Santa Clara University USA 2/10/2000 18 Tsinghua University China 6/28/2000 19 ATSB Malaysia 9/26/2000 20 King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology Saudi Arabia 9/26/2000 11 21 University of Rome "La Sapienza" Italy 9/26/2000 22 Umeå University / Luleå University of Technology Sweden 11/21/2000 23 US Naval Academy USA 9/30/2001 24 Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan 6/30/2003 25 University of Tokyo Japan 6/30/2003 26 University of Toronto Canada 6/30/2003 27 University of Aalborg Denmark 6/30/2003 28 Mozhaisky Military Academy Russia 9/27/2003 29 Technical University of Denmark Denmark 6/30/2003 30 New Mexico State University USA 12/21/2004 Swartwout 31 CU Boulder USA 12/21/2004 32 University of Würzburg Germany ny 10/27/2005 33 Norwegian Universites Norway 10/27/2005 34 European Universities Europe 10/30/1997 35 University of Kansas USA 7/26/2006 36 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo USA 7/26/2006 37 University of Illinois USA 7/26/2006 38 Cornell University USA 7/26/2006 39 Politecnico di Torino, Italy Italy 7/26/2006 40 Nihon University Japan 7/26/2006 41 University of Arizona USA 7/26/2006 42 Montana State University USA 7/26/2006 43 Hankuk Aviation University S Korea 7/26/2006 44 Bauman Moscow State Technical University Russia 7/26/2006 45 Hokkaido Institute of Technology Japan 9/22/2006 46 National University of Comahue Argentina ina 1/10/2007 47 University of Sergio Arboleda Columbia bia 4/17/2007 48 University of Louisiana USA 4/17/2007 49 Fachhochschule Aachen Germany ny 4/28/2008 50 Technical University of Delft Netherlands 4/28/2008 51 Tohoku University Japan 1/23/2009 52 Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology Japan 1/23/2009 53 Kagawa University Japan 1/23/2009 54 Anna University India 4/20/2009 pendent Missions Figure 4: Flagship vs Indepe 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference nce on Small Satellites Updated: What Breaks First? Whether out of embarrassment, prop roprietary concerns, or simply a lack of interest, universit sity-class missions not publish failure reports The following fo information is the author’s best guess based on n news n articles and the few published failure reports and has been revised since the last paper Of the 22 spacecraf aft we have identified as failing prematurely (Figure 7), ), the failures can be attributed to (or guessed to be) the following: fo • Radiation: (TUBSAT-B8) Killed by the Van Allen Belts due to its orbit altitu titude of 1250 km • Launch interface: (Mozha hayets 5) Failed to separate from the launch vehicl icle; it appears to have been a signals problem in the launch la interface • Thermal: (UNAMSAT-B B); cold prelaunch thermal conditions led to an inability ina to contact the spacecraft immediately afterr launch, leading to more thermally-induced battery ry probems ã Communications: 4ẵ (Arsen ene, SEDsat [partial], JAWSAT, Cute-1.7, UWE-1) ) These spacecraft were operational for a short tim ime, losing either their transmitters or receivers (orr both) b unexpectedly Bad wiring is suspected in some me cases ã Power: 4ẵ (SEDSat [partial], [pa ASUSat-1, FalconSAT-1, AAU CubeSat-I, SSETI-Express) The reasons vary, but all off these vehicles had problems, typically with thee connection c between batteries and solar arrays • CPU: (SpriteSat, STARS 1) Both of these spacecraft encountered unexpe pected CPU lockups within days of launch; as off the writing of this paper, they have not been recov overed • Unknown: (JAK, Louise, e, Thelma, CanX-1, DTUsat, NCube II, YES2/Foti tino, KKS 1) These eight spacecraft were confirme med to have released, but contact was never made Bad B communications or bad power is suspected Figure 5: Repeat Mission ons vs Single-Launch Program ams Figure 6: Comparison of Repea eat Launches by Flagship Status One spot of good news for independen dent schools is the growth of the “repeat independent” clu club In 2005, we noted that this club had only fourr m members, all of whom were inactive (Surrey, Weber Sta State, Stanford and Arizona State) Since then, three acti ctive schools have joined: Cal Poly, Aälborg, and Würzbu burg, with a fourth (Torino) set to join in early 2010 In previous papers, we noted that thee Dnepr failure of 2006 destroyed the spacecraft of ten fi first-time schools, and predicted that the odds were again inst most of those schools mustering the resources for a second launch One school (Nihon) has reflown a ccopy of the lost CubeSat, but only Cal Poly has flown wn new hardware since the Dnepr loss.* One should no not infer from this observation that the other eight schoo ools are somehow inferior spacefaring universities; rather er, it serves as an indication of just how much work is required for a school to get one mission ready to fly Figure 7: Spacecraft Lifetimee by Launch Year * Two more schools (Cornell and Montana State) te) are scheduled to fly new hardware in 2010 However, given the un uncertainties of future launches, we cannot count them without publicize ized manifests Swartwout 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference nce on Small Satellites Arguably, all of the known failures ssave TUBSAT-B (and potentially many of the unknownn failures) can be attributed to incomplete system-level te testing or systemlevel design In all those cases, eithe ther the spacecraft was in an unexpected operational en environment, or a component failure led to an operatio tional mode from which ground operators could not reco cover (e.g loss of uplink or a disconnect between batt atteries and solar arrays) While we cannot presume to know what was and was not tested, it would appea ear that rigorous, extensive fully-integrated functional tes testing might have caught these problems before launch It is worth updating a statement from previous papers: not one of the 91 student-built spacecra raft that made it to orbit is known to have had structural al problems And only one of 91 student-built spacecraft ft iis known to have had on-orbit thermal problems.† Grant nted, as we revisit Figure 7, we must admit that student-bu built spacecraft not last very long on orbit (an averag age of 40 months with a median of 24 months, with thee aaverage dropping by more than 12 months if the first six ix spacecraft from the 1980s and 1990s are omitted); ina nadequate thermal design and inattention to COTS electro tronics doubtlessly contribute to those reduced lifetimes Again, while no one should discount the importance of sound structural & thermal analysis/testing, nor should ld students ignore the risks of COTS electronics, the fli light history still indicates that more time needs to be de devoted to systemlevel functional testing rather than these ese three issues Figure 8: Mission Type pe by Year Figure 9: Mission Type pe by Year and University Classif sification Updated: Mission Type In the previous paper, we identified th the growth of EClass missions among independents ts in this decade That trend continues as seen in thee chart of launch manifest by mission type (Figure 8)) aand then further subdivided by flagship and independen dent status (Figure 9) The E-class mission still followss – but does not exactly correspond to – the growth oof CubeSat-class missions (Figure 2, again); about half of CubeSat-class spacecraft (30 of 55) were Beepsats, ts, compared with one-sixth of larger spacecraft (11 off 64) It is very significant to note that, two years ago,, tthose ratios were two-thirds and one-sixth, respectively Revisiting those figures again, the change is that manyy of the CubeSatclass spacecraft in 2009 are being flown wn by flagships Final Scorecard: Flagship vs Inde dependents This point has been discussed in detail in previous papers, but it is worth repeating with ith the new data Due to their government/industry suppo port, flagship schools tend to build more satellites per school sc (22 flags have built 64 spacecraft), their satellitess are a less likely to fail (5 of 52 to reach orbit – less than 10%) 10 and more likely to carry a real mission (50 of 64, 4, or 78%) Perhaps surprisingly, flagships are a late ado dopter of the CubeSat standard, with of 12 flagships manifested m in 20082009 being CubeSats, compared to only of the first 52 By stark contrast, independentt schools s tend to build only one spacecraft, ever (35 independents have launched 55 spacecraft, with 18 of those spacecraft being reflights of vehicles lost to rocket ro failure or from schools no longer producing space acecraft), their failure rates are much higher (17 of 39 to o reach r orbit, or 44%), and less likely to carry a real miission (28 of 55, or 51%) Independents tend to bui uild CubeSats (twothirds, or 37 of 55) And, the flagship-independent bifurc rcation continues Only 14 of 64 (22%) of flagship spacec ecraft are E-Class, while nearly half (27 of 55) of indepen endents are And most flagship-built Beepsats were ere “entry-level” spacecraft followed by a second with a “real” mission † It also must be noted that spacecraft have unk nknown root causes of failure, and structural and/or thermal problems ca cannot be ruled out Swartwout 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference nce on Small Satellites Furthermore, SSTL’s success led to the “Surrey Model”: develop a spacecraft capability within a university environment, build up to more advanced missions and spin the program off into an economically independent entity Intentionally or not, this model has been adopted by several other programs: the University of Toronto Space Flight Laboratory (SFL), SaTReC in Korea,‡ and, as near as we can tell, the Technical University of Berlin and KACST in Saudi Arabia These programs are responsible for other technical innovations (albeit most were done so outside of their university-class missions) For example, SFL was behind the 60-kg MOST telescope Of 47 launches carrying student-built spacecraft to date, only four have failed, but one of them was the 2006 Dnepr carrying 15 university-class missions Unfortunately, independent schools have borne the brunt of the failures, with 15 spacecraft lost, or more than 25% of all independent-built spacecraft placed on rockets Flagships have had an easier time of it, losing only (8%) This is a trend worth following, especially as years continue, to see whether the 2006 loss was a statistical anomaly UNIVERSITY-CLASS INNOVATORS We now move to a decidedly more subjective topic: innovation Innovation, by definition, is something new and useful; for space missions, being “useful” means a significant improvement in cost, timeliness, performance or risk As noted in the introduction, many university participants believe that they are on the cusp of innovative breakthroughs, while many in industry say that the main (or only) role of universities is workforce training Both are correct (Or wrong, depending on how you want to define it.) CubeSat If SSTL’s use of COTS technology and a standardized bus helped start the first small satellite revolution, then the CubeSat standard may be creating the second revolution Especially for this conference, it seems silly to define the CubeSat, but on the off chance that someone reads this paper 20 years from now, I will briefly recap: in 2000, Profs Bob Twiggs of Stanford and Jordi PuigSuari of Cal Poly defined a new set of standards to integrate & fly very small student-built spacecraft.21 The CubeSat standard was to allow three 10x10x10 cm cubes to fit into a single spring-actuated ejector system; the intent was to define a spacecraft size and mission scope such that students could build and fly a spacecraft within their academic lifetimes Standard sizes and performance specifications were also intended to encourage collaboration among schools The first CubeSats were launched in 2003, and six years later (a blink of the eye in aerospace time), more than forty have already flown First, the universities In our research, we can point to two (and only two) space-related innovations developed at universities that have had significant impact on the professional space industry But those two are of such significance that they settle the question It is only a slight exaggeration to say that universities started the first “small satellite revolution” of the 1980s, and what may be seen as the “CubeSat revolution” of this decade The Surrey Model Nearly 25 years ago, researchers in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Surrey (developers of the first two university-class spacecraft: UoSATs & 2) spun off a new company, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL).20 SSTL pioneered the use of COTS technology in small satellites, created a business model around developing fledgling national space programs and a modular spacecraft bus, and expanded into more advanced systems, components and sensors [Side note: while “CubeSat” is the shorthand description for this new process/system, the real contribution of the CubeSat standard is the P-POD ejection system The ejector has been flight-qualified for a number of launchers worldwide, and with the mechanical/electrical isolation provide by the P-POD (and the requirement that CubeSats be powered down on launch), the CubeSats are effectively decoupled from the launch vehicle This allows P-PODs to be added to launch manifests years before the contents of the P-PODs are determined P-POD contents can be allocated late in the integration process For CubeSat developers this means that they can reduce the wait time from spacecraft completion until launch, as more P-PODs are allocated for more rockets around the world There are P-POD equivalents for Japan (T- Arguments can be made about whether SSTL alone “invented” the COTS-based small satellite upon which this conference is founded But we not need to settle that argument here It is inarguable that SSTL was among the very first small-satellite companies and that their success helped create (and sustain) the commercial small satellite industry Thus, by any measure, the University of Surrey made a significant contribution to the very idea of a small satellite And thus a university innovation made a significant contribution to the small satellite industry ‡ Swartwout Who, perhaps unsurprisingly, were an early client of SSTL 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites First, time: SSTL is old enough that most will have forgotten its university roots, and more still will not recognize the sea change brought about by the first small-satellite revolution We are, after all, living after the revolution, and think that small satellites have always been important By contrast, CubeSats are so new that the history of their “revolution” has not been written It’s not at all clear whether this revolution will burn out in a few years, or if this is the next massive change in the way small satellites are built POD), Canada (X-POD) and the U.S Department of Defense (MEPSI).] As we have already documented, more schools than ever before are now building and flying spacecraft But that only indicates that CubeSats are innovative for the university community, as they were originally intended For our purposes, the noteworthy nature of CubeSats is how the standard has been adopted outside the university A short list of non-university CubeSats developers with launches since 2006: NASA Ames Research Center (GeneSat-1, PRESat, PharmaSat-1), NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (NanoSail-D), Aerospace Corporation (AeroCubes 1-3), Boeing (CSTB-1), Hawk Institute for Space Sciences (HawkSat-1), and Tethers Unlimited (MAST) In addition, both the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Science Foundation have active, yearly programs to develop CubeSat technology and missions; the NSF-sponsored RAX space weather CubeSat is scheduled to launch in early 2010 Secondly, compared to large-satellite contractors, the small-satellite industry is, well, small While universities have contributed innovation to small satellites, their effect on large satellites is not at all obvious And thus, for large contractors, universities remain solely a source of new hires University Nanosat For the author, this issue is most clearly revealed in the history of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s University Nanosat Program (UNP) [Disclaimer: the author has been a funded participant in the Nanosat-3 through Nanosat-6 programs, inclusive.] Started in 1999, UNP has the stated goal of training university students in industry-standard aerospace practices as well as flying new space experiments.22 The program accepts 10-13 university applicants per design cycle; the schools develop their own missions, participate in regular external program reviews, and the program culminates in a competitive downselect for one school to fly its hardware Paradoxically, the “unintended consequence” of wide adoption of the CubeSat standard by the professional satellite industry may be that universities are crowded out of the available launch slots It is instructive to note that all of the P-POD launches on U.S rockets (Minotaur I, Minotaur IV, and the Falcon 1) have been government-sponsored CubeSats (NASA, DoD or NSF), with the exception of one Cal Poly flight Other University Missions Looking past SSTL and CubeSats, one is hard-pressed to find other examples of innovation Granted, those two are significant enough that there is no need to look for more examples of innovation; the point is made! For example, the author cannot point to any other startup companies or services that stem from any of the university-class missions described above; all that exist appear to be derived from the Surrey Model or from CubeSats and have already been discussed Since the start UNP, twenty-five schools have participated in the first four design cycles Of those twenty-five schools, three collectively launched their Nanosat spacecraft: 3CS, built by Colorado, Arizona State and New Mexico State, was on the failed Delta IV Heavy inaugural flight in 2004 The other three competition winners are in various stages of integration and delivery: FASTRAC (Texas, the Nanosat-3 winner in 2005) is manifested for February 2010; CUSat (Cornell, the Nanosat-4 winner in 2007) is looking for a manifest; DANDE (Colorado, the Nanosat-5 winner in 2009) is readying for delivery to AFRL As for the other 19 schools, only three have launched any spacecraft missions initiated after 1999, none of which were their Nanosats: Cornell and Montana State had CubeSats on the ill-fated 2006 Dnepr, while Stanford launched QuakeSat in 2003.§ Finally, it is very important to note that the two examples of innovation came from independent schools (Surrey, Stanford and Cal Poly) We will revisit this in the conclusions SCHOOL IS (STILL) IN SESSION If SSTL and CubeSats are such glowing examples of innovation, why does the other opinion hold such sway? Why are universities considered to be only a source of new hires, rather than a partner in technology development? We believe it is a matter of time and of scale Swartwout § Nanosat schools have had bad luck when it comes to launches Those twenty-five schools have manifested five spacecraft, four of which were lost to rocket failures 10 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites others, for a total of 119 spacecraft on fifty launches Given the sheer volume of student-built spacecraft, and the comparative lack of significance of any one of those missions, it is easy to understand how university innovations can be overlooked Again, this discussion should not be inferred as a criticism of the University Nanosat Program nor of the schools involved; indeed, it is not for lack of effort or lack of support that so few spacecraft have been launched Instead, one should recognize how difficult it is for any school to complete a flight-ready spacecraft! In this context, it becomes more understandable that there have been so many universities that finished and flew only one spacecraft; perhaps we should be surprised that any university finishes its first, rather than being disappointed that there have been so few repeats! In particular, for every one university-class spacecraft that flies, we can estimate that there are at least three more projects that haven’t flown (For UNP, that ratio is greater than five to one) And so it is understandable if the conventional wisdom on university-class space missions is that they provide student training first, student training second, and perhaps useful space missions tenth Certainly, well-trained students are the most important outcome of any university engineering program, and universities should take no shame from that fact If the on-orbit success of the UNP has been muted, the professional-training aspect has been tremendously successful Any university can provide anecdotal evidence of the tremendous benefits of participating in UNP, and this author is no exception Our school** is a small engineering program with no aerospace undergraduate degrees We brought three students to the final competition for Nanosat-3 (out of seven on the program) We brought more than a dozen to the finals for Nanosat-4 and Nanosat-5 (out of nearly four dozen) Our university used to send one student to the space industry every other year; we now place a dozen per year, with another half-dozen or more in summer internships In that context, it is not a complaint to say that UNP has been mainly a means of recruiting and training students for aerospace careers, rather than a means of introducing innovation into the space industry Still, if it takes 119 spacecraft to produce two innovations of the magnitude of SSTL and CubeSats, we call that success.†† Where will the next innovation come from, and what will it look like? We will not even attempt to answer; after all, who outside of Surrey anticipated that they could help kickoff a new wave of small spacecraft, and who outside of Stanford and Cal Poly saw the CubeSats coming? At most, based on our sample size of two, we will predict that whatever innovation comes will be a product of an independent school, not a flagship Finally, Good News for Independents As noted earlier, while flagships enjoy a significant advantage over independent schools in every metric (number of spacecraft per school, quality of missions, odds of mission success), flagships have produced no identifiable innovations Instead, three independent schools (one of which had not yet flown a satellite) are responsible for the innovations we discussed Why is that? We can only speculate, but our hypothesis is that flagships’ success comes from following standard industrial approaches to spacecraft development: with the advantage of significant government funding comes the requirement to achieve success, which naturally leads to the use of standard industry practices By definition, that is not a recipe for innovation Finally, it must be noted that these comments are based on the state of the program in mid-2009 There is now a backlog of flight-ready spacecraft; with the six-year gap between Nanosat-2 and Nanosat-3 launches ending in 2010 (and the Nanosat-4 launch possibly soon thereafter), we might have different assessments of their performance in a year or two CONCLUSION The very first university-class space mission in 1981 (UoSat-1) led to the creation of SSTL, which helped lead the first small satellite revolution The 28th rocket carrying university-class spacecraft released six CubeSats in 2003, which marks the second significant innovation by universities to the small satellite industry Still, that first launch was nearly 30 years ago, and its impact nearly has been forgotten That 28th launch was recent enough that the full implications have not been worked out Perhaps more significantly, those seven university-class spacecraft have been joined by 113 The Innovator’s Dilemma Another reason that independent schools have sparked the few university-led innovations in small spacecraft is that they had no other option Lacking the resources of the flagships, independent schools embrace ambitious, †† In truth, it took only two spacecraft to produce SSTL, and only forty-one more to produce CubeSats Why we have nothing more to show for our next sixty spacecraft is a subject for another paper ** Washington University in St Louis, where the author worked from 1999-2009 Swartwout 11 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites Swartwout, M.A., “The Role of Universities in Small Satellite Research”, Proceedings of the 2nd International Aerospace Conference, Moscow, Russia, September 1997 Swartwout, M.A., Kitts C.A., and T.A Olsen, “The Omni-Directional Differential Sun Sensor,” Proceedings of 31st Annual International Telemetry Conference: Reengineering Telemetry, Las Vegas, NV, November 1995 Lu, R.A., Olsen, T.A and M.A Swartwout, “Building `Smaller, Cheaper, Faster' Satellites Within the Constraints of an Academic Environment”, Proceedings of the 9th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, UT, September 1995 Bauman, J “NASA chief justifies cuts during session at USU,” Deseret Morning News, August 15, 2006 Cited from online version on June 2009: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,6451 93239,00.html?pg=2 Swartwout, M.A., "Twenty (plus) Years of University-Class Spacecraft: A Review of What Was, An Understanding of What Is, And a Look at What Should Be Next, " Proceedings of the 20th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, SSC06-I-3, Logan, UT, August 2006 Swartwout, M.A., “Beyond the Beep: StudentBuilt Satellites with Educational and ‘Real’ Missions,” Proceedings of the 21st AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, SSC07-XI-2, Logan, UT, August 2007 REFERENCES Much work in university-class spacecraft is not published – especially for missions that flew in the 20th century Meanwhile, most of the 21st-century university “publishing” comes from ephemeral web pages All websites cited were active as of June 2009, although we suspect that you could just as well as the author did by using Google Swartwout, M.A., “The First One Hundred University-Class Spacecraft 1981 -2008”, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, vol 24, No 3, March 2009 10 SSTL, "Small Satellites Home Page," http://centaur.sstl.co.uk/SSHP/micro/index.html, June 2009 11 SSTL, "Nanosatellites," http://centaur.sstl.co.uk/ SSHP/nano/index.html, June 2009 12 G Krebs, "Gunter's Space Page," http://www.skyrocket.de/space/space.html, June 2009 13 S R Bible, "A Brief History of Amateur Satellites," http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/ n7hpr/history.html., June 2009 14 Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database, http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_gl obal_security/space_weapons/technical_issues/uc s-satellite-database.html, June 2009 innovative methods simply because they have no other means of building, testing & flying their spacecraft The disadvantage, of course, is that innovative methods for developing, testing & launching spacecraft are unproven by definition, and thus it is far more difficult to find launch programs willing to fly these new systems So while independent schools are more naturally inclined to seek innovation, they are also less likely to finish & fly their innovations The Next Innovators As noted ad infinitum above, the CubeSat revolution has not played out – in fact, we hesitate to even use the phrase, as CubeSats are still in their infancy Still, it must be noted that with NASA, NSF and NRO putting significant resources into CubeSat developments, and with two recent and one upcoming P-POD flights on U.S rockets, the future of CubeSats looks significantly different than it did even two years ago And thus we make no attempt to predict what will happen in the next two years, other to observe that 2010 is another potential watershed to match the events of 2000 (which gave rise to the CubeSat and set back the cause of university-class spacecraft in the U.S.) Eight science/technology-based CubeSats will fly on ESA’s first Vega flight, and the first UNP Nanosat in five years will fly on the Minotaur IV In particular, the results of the Vega flight will be very indicative of the future potential of university-class CubeSats, and CubeSats in general We wait with great anticipation Swartwout, M.A., “University-Class Satellites: From Marginal Utility to 'Disruptive' Research Platforms,” Proceedings of the 18th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, UT, August 2004 Swartwout, M.A and C.A Kitts, “A Beacon Monitoring System for Automated Fault Operations,” Proceedings of the 10th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, UT, September 1996 Swartwout 12 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites 15 Triharjanto, R.H., Hasbi W., Widipaminto, A., Mukhayadi, M and U Renner, "LAPANTUBSAT: Micro-satellite platform for surveillance and remote sensing," Proceedings of the 4S Symposium: Small Satellites, Systems and Services, La Rochelle, France 16 Roemer, S and U Renner, "Flight experiences with DLR-TUBSAT," Acta Astronautica, vol 52, No 9-12, 2003 17 Roemer, S and U Renner, "Flight experience with the micro satellite MAROC-TUBSAT," Proceedings of the 54th International Astronautical Congress, Bremen, Germany, 2003 18 Steckling, M., Renner, U., and H P Roeser, "DLR-TUBSAT, qualification of high precision attitude control in orbit," Acta Astronautica, vol 39, No 9-12, 1996 19 Renner, U., "University experiments for small satellites," European Space Agency, (Special Publication) ESA SP 298, 1989, pp 47 20 Sweeting, M.N., “25 Years of Space at Surrey – Pioneering Modern Microsatellies”, Acta Astronautica vol 49, No 12, December 2001 21 Heidt, H., Puig Suari, J., Moore, A., Nakasuka, S., and Twiggs, R., "CubeSat: A new Generation of Picosatellite for Education and Industry Low Cost Space Experimentation", Proceedings of the 14th AIAA/USU Small Satellite Conference, Logan, UT, August 2000 22 Hunyadi, G., Ganley, J., Peffer, A., and M Kumashiro, M, “The University Nanosat Program: an adaptable, responsive and realistic capability demonstration vehicle,” Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Aerospace Conference, vol 5, Big Sky, MT, March 2004 Swartwout 13 23rd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites ... averag age of 40 months with a median of 24 months, with thee aaverage dropping by more than 12 months if the first six ix spacecraft from the 1980s and 1990s are omitted); ina nadequate thermal design... that there is no need to look for more examples of innovation; the point is made! For example, the author cannot point to any other startup companies or services that stem from any of the university- class... students are the most important outcome of any university engineering program, and universities should take no shame from that fact If the on-orbit success of the UNP has been muted, the professional-training