Cal Poly satellite launched into space Sunday by Virgin Orbit
–On Sunday morning at about 10:41 a.m. a modified Boeing 747 launched a rocket under its wing into space. The Virgin Orbit plane took off from the Mohave Air and Spaceport and flew to an altitude of 35,000 feet before launching the rocket and its cargo of 10 satellites, including one designed and built by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students.
Cal Poly’s project, called ExoCube 2, is a satellite about the size of a loaf of bread that was built over several years by a group of about 50 multidisciplinary Cal Poly students, said advisor Pauline Faure, an aerospace engineering assistant professor in the College of Engineering.
“The mission is scientific in nature,” Faure said, “and aims to acquire data on ions’ mass and density in the exosphere,” the uppermost region of Earth’s atmosphere as it gradually fades into the vacuum of space.
“To execute the mission,” Faure added, “NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center developed a spectrometer, and the Cal Poly CubeSat Laboratory team was tasked to design, develop, manufacture, assemble and test the supporting elements of the spacecraft system — structure, power system, communication, flight software, etc. The students were definitely the driver of the project execution and deserve the full credit of the incredible work they achieved.”
Once Cal Poly’s 12th CubeSat achieves orbit, a student team will use the campus CubeSat Lab groundstation to download scientific data from the spacecraft and share it with their counterparts at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Illinois who are responsible for its interpretation.
Payloads successfully deployed into our target orbit! We are so, so proud to say that LauncherOne has now completed its first mission to space, carrying 9 CubeSat missions into Low Earth Orbit for our friends @NASA. #LaunchDemo2
— Virgin Orbit (@Virgin_Orbit) January 17, 2021
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