ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
The next step was the first-of- its-kind NPS CubeSat Launcher (NPSCuL), a secondary payload mounted in an empty area of an Atlas V and launched four times, starting in 2012. NPSCuL was not a space- craft itself, but a spacecraft launcher; the first one contained 13 individual CubeSats and deployed them into their own separate orbits. A total of 46 CubeSats were deployed from NPSCuL between 2012 and 2015. Nowadays, launchers like NPSCuL are commonly used by commercial launch providers. Among the CubeSats launched by NPSCuL was one of NPS’ first Cube- Sats, a collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which was used to study potential threats from space debris and collisions with other satellites. In 2019, NPS launched another small satellite aboard a SpaceX Fal- con Heavy rocket, the advanced NPS Spacecraft Architecture and Technology Demonstration Satellite (NPSAT1). Designed as a space-based laboratory, the 190-pound NPSAT1 was intended to allow students to run numerous spaceflight experiments to investigate space weather and dem- onstrate space technology. Today, NPS continues to develop and launch CubeSats, employing the latest in rapidly developing com- mercial technology. Most recently, in March 2024, the NPS 6U CubeSat, named Mola, launched into space aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Fa- cility on the Virginia coast with three payloads: Korimako, a radio transmit- ter built by the New Zealand Defence Science and Technology group, and two payloads built by NPS—a tera- hertz imaging camera (TIC) and an LED on-orbit payload (LOOP). The NPS Mola CubeSat was successfully launched into orbit in March 2024 by the National Recon- naissance Office, riding aboard a Rocket Lab Elec- tron rocket. In January 2025, the Otter CubeSat continued NPS experimentation with line-of-sight communication started by Mola. Source: Courtesy photo by Brady Kenniston / Rocket Lab
Mola is connected to the Mo- bile CubeSat Command and Control (MC3) network, a series of ground tracking stations spread across the country that NPS began developing in 2011. The network includes collabora- tions with academia, industry, and all international partners from the Five Eyes (FVEY) intelligence alliance— Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. One of the experiments will use a ground-based optical telescope to observe the green LEDs on LOOP to evaluate how to track objects in LEO. Mola is the first step toward the future goal of high-rate optical communica- tions using the MC3 network. Launched in early 2025, the Otter CubeSat is flying New Zealand De- fense Science and Technology’s sec- ond communications payload, Tui, a risk-reduction effort for space-based maritime domain awareness capabili- ties. Two NPS-built payloads are also manifested on Otter—an X-band
transmitter and the next iteration of LOOP to continue experimenting with line-of-sight communications by using two banks of LEDs, trans- mitting in green and near-infrared wavelengths that are capable of modulating light for basic messaging. More than 20 NPS students will have directly contributed to the Mola and Otter CubeSats in the FVEY series. These NPS spacecraft, and others, helped hundreds of students launch their master’s thesis research in Space Systems Engineering and Space Sys- tems Operations. The graduates then apply this hands-on experi- ence directly to DoD missions during their careers. Robots in Space “We work with modeling, simula- tion, and experimental testing of au- tonomous orbital robotic space sys- tems,” said astrodynamicist Jennifer Hudson, a research associate profes- sor with the NPS Spacecraft Robotics
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker