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ION-F: Ionospheric Observation Nanosatellite Formation
Utah State University, the University of Washington, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute designed and developing a system of three 10-kg spacecraft to investigate satellite coordination and management technologies and distributed ionospheric measurements. The launch was scheduled for early 2002. My own involvement with the project was as the systems engineer / project engineer for the UW's "Dawgstar" satellite from initial design through CDR.
This project is being sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research,
Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA),
and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
The ION-F cluster was originally scheduled for launch some time in early 2002 on a
Space Shuttle mission.
As the system engineer at the UW it was my job to make sure that all of the other students and faculty working on this project had the tools and (more importantly) the information they needed to get their work done. I needed to make sure everybody works with the latest set of numbers, check the interfaces between sub systems, make sure everything fits together (configuration control), and keep an eye on the big picture goal of the mission (requirements management).
A paper detailing the ION-F and the Dawgstar satellite is available
online.
Dawgstar is a small hexagon, about 18 inches in diameter and 10 inches tall. One of its
most challenging design issues is the orbital maneuvering / attitude control system, which
uses a total of eight micro pulsed plasma thrusters developed in collaboration with
Primex Aerospace.
ralph.open-aerospace.org