Satellite built by students soars to space on mission to map heat in Phoenix, other cities – AZCentral

An Antares rocket blasts off from the launchpad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Nov. 2, 2019. The rocket sent the Cygnus spacecraft on a resupply journey to the International Space Station, carrying a payload that included seven small satellites made by students at U.S. universities.(Photo: Vivek Chacko/Arizona State University)

As the countdown began at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, a crowd of engineers and scientists stood on bleachers in the sun, looking out across a grassy field and wetlands at a rocket on the launchpad.

Mission control announced: T-minus 10, 9, 8 The onlookers joined in, counting loudly: 3, 2, 1.

Smoke billowed from the launchpad and the rocket rose atop a column of white fire.

Liftoff of Antares, the voice from mission control said, and the crowd whooped and cheered.

On the bleachers, a group of nine young engineers and computer scientists watched the rocket until it disappeared into the blue sky. They hugged each other, elated at their achievement.

The group, all of them students or recent graduates of Arizona State University, built a miniature research satellite named Phoenix that launchedinto space aboard anAntares rocket headed for the International Space Station. The students creation weighs just 8.6 pounds and is about the size of a loaf of bread 12 inches long by 4 inches wide.

They designed the mini-satellite, known as a CubeSat, to study the urban heat islandeffect in Phoenix and six other cities across the country. They hope that by capturing infrared thermal images of the cities,the satellitewill generate block-by-block data on heat trends, which could help urban planners design cooler cityscapes to withstand the effects as the world continues to heat up due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Students Sarah Rogers, Vivek Chacko and Raj Biswas discuss testing an electrical interface board for the Phoenix CubeSat in a lab at Arizona State University.(Photo: Yegor Zenkov/Arizona State University)

Four years ago, the students wrote a proposal to build the satellite and obtained $200,000 in NASA funding. A total of about 80 undergraduate students took part in the project. Many of them spent long hours designing the spacecraft, piecing together the components, testing its systems, and writing code to make it all work.

For the core group who continued working on the CubeSat after graduating, the Nov. 2 launch was a milestone to celebrate.

It was probably the most memorable experience Ive ever had in my life, Sarah Rogers, the 22-year-old project manager, said.I shed a couple of tears of joy as I was watching it go up.

The rocket sent a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft soaring into orbit to resupply the space station. Along with the Phoenix satellite and other cargo, the spacecraft delivered six other CubeSats made by students at other universities.

The Phoenix CubeSat will remain aboard the space station until mid-January when its scheduled to deploy into orbit and begin using its infrared camera to capture thermal images of Phoenix and other cities.

Many other satellites are circling the Earth recording images, but almost all of them look at the visible spectrum of light or near-infrared, which helps scientists study vegetation. Thermal images arent as common.

From left to right, student Vivek Chacko, Assistant Professor Danny Jacobs, student Sarah Rogers, and Professor Judd Bowman pose with the Phoenix spacecraft at Arizona State University before the satellite was delivered to be launched into space.(Photo: Vivek Chacko/Arizona State University)

The idea for the satellitewas suggested to the students by Judd Bowman, a professor in the School Of Earth and Space Exploration who is the principal investigator and faculty sponsor of the project.When the students started working on the project, many of them were freshmen just starting to study engineering or computer science.

They began as a team with a lot of excitement but no experience, Danny Jacobs, an assistant professor and faculty adviser on the project, said.The most important thing to come out of this mission are the 80 students that worked on it.

Jacobs said the project is ambitious, and the delivery of the satellite in August was a major success.

Once the spacecraftis in orbit, it will produce heat maps that show trends at the neighborhood level and over time, providing valuable data that city planners will be able to put to use, Jacobs said.

In addition to focusing on Phoenix, the plan is for the satellite to gather thermal images of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Baltimore and Minneapolis.

Alongside the rises in global temperatures unleashed byclimate change, urban heat islands add to hotter conditions in cities. The vast areas that are paved over with concrete and asphalt soak up the suns heat, and then radiate it at night, pushing temperatures higher.

Extreme summer heat has long been part of life in Phoenix, which is the countys hottest major city. But climate change and the heat island effect are combining to drive temperatures to new highs.

The number of record-hot summer days has risen dramatically in the past decade. Nights have also grown warmer. And heat-associated deaths in the Phoenix area are on the rise, reaching a record of 182 deaths reported in Maricopa County last year.

Long-term strategies for combatting heat in cities range from installing cool roofs that reflect more sunlight to planting trees to give neighborhoods more shade.

Rogers and other members of the ASU team hope that data collected by the satellite will help guide decisions about these sorts of remedies by capturing block-by-block images showing areas that are hotter or cooler.

RECORD HIGH: Heat deaths in Phoenix reached a record high in 2018

Working in a lab at Arizona State University, students discuss how satellite components will connect with each other.(Photo: Yegor Zenkov/Arizona State University)

The students worked on the satellite in a lab in the basement of ASUs Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 4.

Rogers, who was born and raised in Tempe, majored in aerospace engineering and had joined the Sun Devil Satellite Laboratory during her freshman year in 2015. That fall, she and other students got word from Bowman that NASA was offering grants allowing undergraduates to take on projects such as building CubeSats.

Bowman recruited some students to work on the design and others to start analyzing the science side of the project. Rogers took on the job of project manager.

In April 2016, the team learned that they would receive NASA funding. They started selecting off-the-shelf components, buying two of each so they would have an engineering model and spare parts to draw from if needed.

The students designed and built the satellite's structure, as well as interface ports for data and power, Rogers said.

They encountered challenges in deciphering how to integrate the parts, and in staying on track with the timeline. They developed lab procedures for working with the hardware to make sure they werent damaging anything as they assembled the satellite.

Rogers graduated in May with her bachelors degree and stayed on this fall to start a masters degree program in aerospace engineering at ASU.

Student Sarah Rogers holds the miniature satellite Phoenix, which she and other students built at Arizona State University.(Photo: School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University)

Last summer, she and other students focused on the finishing touches, often working late into the night taking apart the pieces and putting them back together, and finishing the software. Rogers said she usually arrived at the lab at 7 a.m. and worked until midnight.

In August, Rogers and fellow teammate Vivek Chacko flew to Houston to hand-deliver the spacecraft.

The students are now preparing for the next phase, which will involve operating the satellite from a station on the ASU campus in Tempe.

Phoenixs infrared camera is equipped with a lens that will capture 68 meters per pixel, allowing the satellite to make thermal images down to a resolution showing city blocks.

Some of the students created detailed maps of each city dividing the landscape into 17 climate zones, ranging from compact low-rise to open mid-rise to scattered trees.

Once the team gets thermal images from space, they plan to overlay them on the climate-zone maps to analyze what theyre seeing. They also plan to check temperatures recorded in the thermal images against on-the-ground measurements.

What we plan to do is analyze how the makeup of our urban infrastructure itself is contributing to having warmer areas, Rogers said. She said the results should help show how we can either adjust building materials or adjust the layout of the urban infrastructure to make our cities a lot more sustainable for future generations.

Mission manager Jake Cornish of the company Nanoracks checks that the Phoenix CubeSat, which was built by students at Arizona State University, is sized correctly to be deployed from the International Space Station.(Photo: Vivek Chacko/Arizona State University)

They calculate that the satellitewill be in space for two years before it reenters the atmosphere and burns up. They hope itwill function for at least a year to study changes during the four seasons.

Once Rogers and her team analyze the data, they intend to present the information to city planners.

Our mission is novel, and the way that were studying the urban heat island effect itself is also still relatively new within the scientific community, Rogers said. So, were really excited to get data back and start analyzing it.

She said with the effects of climate change worsening in recent years, one of her teams main goals has been to build a piece of technology that will enable cities to pinpoint actions that can help combat heat.

COULD PHOENIX BE NEXT?: L.A. installs off-white streets to beat heat.

For now, Phoenix has been placed inside a deployer pod on the space station. Sometime in January, astronauts plan to deploy the CubeSatinto orbit. If all goes as planned, a door will pop open and a spring will eject the satelliteinto space.

Rogers and her colleagues are looking forward to watching a NASA livestream as the satellite tumbles off into space a motion that will slow and stop once the control system kicks in.

For now, the team has been sharing a video that Rogers classmate Trevor Bautista recorded of the rocket thundering into the sky in Virginia.

It feels so incredible to know that Phoenix is soon going to be able to do everything that weve designed it to do, and really make a difference, Rogers said. Honestly, I just feel over the moon.

In fact, Rogers said shes inspired by NASAs plans for returning to the moon with astronauts. And the Phoenix CubeSat mission has helped her prepare for the next phase of her space career.

She said her goal is to work as a systems engineer on other missions, building spacecraft to study planets and enable humans to learn more about the universe.

Reach reporter Ian James at ian.james@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8246. Follow him on Twitter: @ByIanJames

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Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Satellite built by students soars to space on mission to map heat in Phoenix, other cities - AZCentral