ExoCube 2 is among 10 small satellites flying aboard Virgin Orbits LauncherOne rocket that takes off under the wing of a Boeing 747 before being dropped and fired into orbit

SAN LUIS OBISPO A Cal Poly CubeSat will ride on Wednesday Jan. 13 aboard Virgin Orbits LauncherOne rocket on its second attempt to reach space.

The rocket includes nine other NASA-sponsored small satellites on the space agencys next Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) mission. This is the first payload carried by Virgin Orbits rocket that will be carried aloft under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 to an altitude of 35,000 feet, released and fired into orbit.

The mothership jet, named Cosmic Girl, will take off from Mojave Air and Space Port, which will release the two-stage LauncherOne off the coast of Southern California. The launch window is 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific Time, with additional windows throughout January if needed, the company announced.

The mission includes ExoCube 2, 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 Earths atmosphere as it gradually fades into the vacuum of space.

To execute the mission, Faure added, NASAs 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 Polys 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.

ExoCube 2s mission is to expand knowledge of the composition and the current state of activity in the thin exosphere atmosphere, some 600 km (370 miles) above sea level. The data will be useful in better predicting space weather phenomena in order to forecast potential effects of ions on satellite communications and spacecraft performance.

The three-unit CubeSat is a relaunch of the original ExoCube, which launched in early 2015 but suffered from antenna problems. ExoCube 2 underwent a complete redesign of the antenna deployment mechanisms.

This will also be Virgin Orbits second attempt to reach orbit. The Launch Demo 2 mission was delayed from mid-December, because COVID-19 contact tracing led to a round of precautionary quarantines of the companys personnel. Quarantines meant the company had fallen below the number of staff we feel we require to prudently and safely proceed with pre-launch operations, the company said in a release.

For the past few years, Virgin Orbit has been developing and testing its unique launch system, which involves using the refitted Virgin Atlantic 747 to carry a rocket nearly 7 miles high, where the rocket is released and its engine ignites following a 4-second drop.

After an engine burn and stage separations, LauncherOne will deliver its payload to orbit, while Cosmic Girl returns to the Mojave Air and Space Port airstrip. Its the same facility where Cal Poly alumnus Burt Rutan (aerospace engineering, 65) developed and launched SpaceShipOne the worlds first privately built aircraft to reach space in 2004.

This will also be the NASAs ELaNa mission No. 20. The Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program was started ion 2010 to attract and retain students in STEM science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Managed by the Launch Services Program at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ELaNa introduces educational spaceflight to high schools and colleges across the nation.

Cal Polys last ELaNa satellite was LEO, or Launch Environment Observer, a two-unit CubeSat that launched in June of 2019 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Monday night from NASAs historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A low-cost platform for agency missions, CubeSats and other small satellites are playing a larger role in space exploration, technology demonstration, scientific research, and educational investigations at NASA. The other nine CubeSats on this mission were designed and built by seven other universities in the United States, as well as one NASA center. They include:

--PolarCube, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado--MiTEE, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan--CACTUS-1, Capitol Technology University, Laurel, Maryland--Q-PACE, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida--TechEdSat-7, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California--RadFXSat-2, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee--CAPE-3, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana--PICS (two CubeSats), Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

NASA selected and sponsored Cal Poly and the other providers through the agencys CubeSat Launch Initiative. By offering small satellite developers a relatively low-cost avenue to conduct science investigations and technology demonstrations in space, NASA gives K-12 schools, universities and nonprofit organizations hands-on flight hardware development experience.

The journey to this launch has been long and challenging, said Scott Higginbotham, ELaNa 20 mission manager. Our CubeSat developers have invested much of themselves in their spacecraft, and I know theyll all be thrilled to see them fly later this month.

Arielle Cohen Electrical engineering major Arielle Cohen works on the ExoCube 2 CubeSat scheduled for launch aboard a Virgin Orbit rocket Wednesday. Cohen graduated in 2019 and works as a digital design electronics engineer at Northrop Grumman. ExoCube 2 is Cal Polys 12thCubeSat.

Aaron Fielden Mechanical engineering graduate student Aaron Fielden works with an unidentified student outside the Cal Poly clean room during testing of the ExoCube 2 satellite, a collaboration between the university and NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Fielden was a project manager in 2016-17 for the ExoCube 2 satellite that is designed to characterize ion densities in the exosphere, the thin atmosphere some 370 miles above sea level. ExoCube 2 is scheduled for launch aboard Virgin Orbits LauncherOne rocket between 7 to 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

Photos courtesy of Cal Poly PolySat

In the photo at the top,Virgin Orbit teammates complete a dry run of the payload encapsulation process last August inside its Nebula payload processing facility ahead of the companys Launch Demo 2 mission. The payload has 10 small satellites, called CubeSats, including Cal Polys 12th CubeSat, ExoCube 2. Virgin Orbit is gearing up for ELaNa 20, the Jan. 13 Launch Demo 2 flight from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Photo courtesy of Virgin Orbit/Greg Robinson

Contact: Pat Pemberton805-235-0555;ppembert@calpoly.edu

January 11, 2021

# # #

More:

Cal Polys 12th CubeSat Mission Will Wing Its Way Into Space on Jan. 13 in a Novel Way - Cal Poly San Luis Obispo News