Whereas the Worldwide Area Station was travelling over the Pacific Ocean early Sunday (Nov. 27) morning, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft carrying a miniature satellite tv for pc constructed by College of Victoria college students autonomously docked to the space-facing port of the station’s Concord module.
UVic’s optical reference calibration satellite tv for pc, generally known as ORCASat, launched into its journey into area at 11:20 a.m. on Saturday from NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart in Florida.
Witnessing the launch was a significant aid for ORCASat undertaking supervisor Alex Doknjas, who nervously watched from his household’s front room in Campbell River on Saturday morning.
“It was fairly superior,” Doknjas, a latest graduate of UVic’s engineering program, informed Black Press Media. The preliminary launch scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 22 was scrapped because of poor climate.
UVic’s ORCASat received a nationwide competitors funded by the Canadian Area Company (CSA), the Canadian CubeSat Venture, which noticed 15 groups of scholars from every province and territory design and construct their very own CubeSat with the steering of CSA consultants and representatives from the Canadian area trade.
In consequence, UVic’s satellite tv for pc was one in every of two post-secondary initiatives from Canada chosen to be a part of Saturday’s launch, alongside a satellite tv for pc constructed by college students at Dalhousie College in Halifax, N.S.
“It’s fairly exceptional, particularly as a result of UVic isn’t an enormous college,” Doknjas mentioned. “I feel that’s fairly spectacular.”
Greater than 100 full-time researchers, co-op and volunteer college students from UVic Satellite tv for pc Design, UBC Orbit and Simon Fraser College Satellite tv for pc Design have all contributed to the undertaking which started in 2018.
Tristan Tarnowski, ORCASat workforce member and UVic engineering pupil, throughout meeting of the UVic satellite tv for pc. (Courtesy ORCASat)
ORCASat is corresponding to the scale of a two litre carton of milk or tissue field, and solely weighs about two-and-a-half kilograms. As soon as despatched out into earth’s orbit the satellite tv for pc will act as a man-made star, serving as a reference gentle supply in orbit that may be considered by telescopes again down on earth, mentioned Doknjas.
“What we’re making an attempt to do is reveal this idea of calibrating telescopes,” he mentioned. “When you’re a telescope on the bottom observing a star, you’re observing the sunshine that the star emits and that gentle travels via earth’s environment. The environment is continually altering and as gentle passes via it, the sunshine will get scattered, and that impact of how gentle reacts within the environment will not be effectively understood.”
The distinction between ORCASat and an precise star, nevertheless, is that scientists on earth can talk with ORCASat, permitting them to know precisely how vivid the satellite tv for pc is, along with how vivid it seems via a telescope.
“Now you’ve got two separate measurements. You recognize precisely how vivid it really is, and you understand vivid it appeared to you. From these two measurements you possibly can calculate the distinction, which is how a lot of that gentle is misplaced within the environment,” defined Doknjas.
Doknjas mentioned that though the idea isn’t new, it’s the primary time {that a} gentle supply able to performing an experiment like this has been carried on a satellite tv for pc into area. He added that the expertise may very well be used sooner or later for earth statement, and even methane detection for local weather change.
ORCASat will stay on the Worldwide Area Station earlier than being launched into earth’s orbit to gather information for roughly one yr, however that is dependent upon components like solar flares and photo voltaic radiation that impression the lifetime of the satellite tv for pc.
Do you’ve got a narrative tip? Electronic mail: austin.westphal@saanichnews.com.
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Aviation and spaceScienceUVic
