Eyes on the sky: Calgary's first student-built space satellite gets ready for liftoff

CBC

5 days ago

A team of University of Calgary students is looking forward to sending the city's first student-built satellite to space early next year.
The project — known as FrontierSat — is primarily led by undergraduate students in the Schulich School of Engineering and the Faculty of Science. They're hoping the satellite will provide new data about a rare space weather phenomenon.
"It's a pretty novel thing that we're doing," said Pierre Dawe, an engineering undergraduate student and the team's structural lead. "Since Calgary isn't a super big hub of aerospace, it's been a really good opportunity for everyone on the team to get involved and learn how to design stuff that goes to space."
FrontierSat is managed by the CalgaryToSpace team. Established in 2020, the team currently has more than 100 members, with many others having come and gone from the project over the course of their degrees.
Although other student-driven space engineering teams have launched satellites into space — namely at the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto — none have studied the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere as extensively as FrontierSat plans to.
Studying the unknown
The satellite, which is known as a CubeSat, is about 30 centimetres long — roughly the size of a loaf of bread.
As a type of nanosatellite, CubeSats are often more affordable, making them ideal for student teams looking to build an effective craft at low cost. While most will carry eight or nine payloads, CubeSat has two — a mini plasma imager and a deployable composite lattice boom.
The plasma imager will help the team study the ionosphere, specifically upper atmospheric winds known as Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, or STEVE.
STEVE is similar to the aurora borealis in that it emits colourful ribbons of light, but they are often narrower and purple instead of green, prompting researchers to declare it a distinct phenomenon.
Still, not much is known about the atmospheric event, and the team is hoping to change that by publishing any data they collect about STEVE in a research paper.
"It would be amazing if we end up getting a multi-year dataset of STEVE observations with FrontierSat," Johnathan Burchill, the principal investigator for the FrontierSat mission, said in an email.
STEVE hasn't been studied much yet, said team member Meagan Davies, who is working on a dual degree in astrophysics and biomedical engineering.
"That's what we're mainly looking into and kind of learning more about space weather through that," she said.
CubeSat also has a boom, an arm that typically extends off a satellite to carry systems like antennas or solar panels. While CubeSat's boom will not have any additional equipment, there is a camera above the arm allowing the team to monitor the satellite and capture images of space.
The project has received funding from various avenues, including a larger funding program at the university, called Innovative Measurements of Auroral Geophysics for Education and Research, or IMAGER. It's primarily funded by the Canadian Space Agency through a nationwide grant program.
In a statement to CBC News, the CSA said they recognize the importance of supporting space-related research, and continue to partner with organizations "to pursue their goals and show them that opportunities in the space sector and STEM are open to all."
Other student-led fundraising campaigns have also helped bring in money for the project.
Several hurdles on the path to launch
The team originally planned to launch in the fall, but various technical delays and difficulty finding a launch provider to help get the satellite to space were early obstacles.
Dawe said the plan is to send CubeSat on a SpaceX Falcon 9. But to do that, they have to go through a launch provider, who acts as a liaison between the team and SpaceX. He said while these providers are less expensive, many are small start-ups that either go under, or are acquired by larger companies that change the services they provide.
"That's probably been one of the biggest non-technical challenges that we've had to deal with," he said. Fortunately, they found a launch provider in a German-based company called Exolaunch.
Now, the team is just waiting to hear when they can head to California for liftoff, said Burchill, who is also an assistant professor in transdisciplinary space science and aerospace technology at the university.
"The satellite was going to launch as early as Oct. 1 and then somehow the rocket was overbooked," Burchill said. "We've been rescheduled for another flight. We're just waiting for confirmation on the date, but it's looking like early next year, 2026, is the current time."
In addition to the logistics of a launch, there are also many moving pieces that must work in harmony to ensure the satellite functions when it enters orbit, said Aarti Chandiramani, a geomatics engineering and aerospace student.
"Getting all the other components together, integrating everything and making sure that they all work seamlessly is probably the biggest technical challenge of making a satellite," said Chandiramani, who works on the satellite's Attitude Determination and Control System, which controls its direction in space.
The satellite has also gone through a series of rigorous tests over the last two years, said undergraduate student and structural team member Yuki Zhou. In June, they passed their final random vibration test, which shakes the satellite to check if it can withstand exiting Earth's atmosphere.
"That's one of our biggest achievements so far," Zhou said, adding they are waiting for approval on their final test report before the satellite will be ready for takeoff.
Having a blast
The plan is for CubeSat to orbit 510 kilometres above the Earth's surface. While a variety of factors such as solar and geomagnetic storms could shorten the lifespan of the satellite, Burchill said they hope it will stay in orbit for up to seven years.
At its core, the project is about helping students develop skills in space engineering — and hopefully enjoying themselves along the way, Burchill said. While the ultimate goal is to have a functioning satellite, establishing radio contact with CubeSat would be a huge accomplishment for the team's first satellite.
"It's fun, that's the main thing," Burchill said. "It's a really fun project."
Although the team does not know exactly when they will see CubeSat in space, Chandiramani said the years of work have been worth it.