Mission accomplished: UVic satellite reaches the International Space Station

In the early hours of November 27, as the International Space Station flew over the Pacific Ocean, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft carrying small satellites assembled by students at the University of Victoria docked autonomously into the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony Module. Did.

UVic’s optical reference calibration satellite, known as ORCASat, embarked on its journey into space at 11:20 am Saturday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

ORCASat Project Manager Alex Doknjas watched nervously from his family’s living room in Greater Victoria on Saturday morning. Doknjas, a recent graduate of his engineering program at UVic, told Black Press Media: The first launch, scheduled for Tuesday, November 22nd, was canceled due to inclement weather.

UVic’s ORCASat won the national competition, Canada’s CubeSat project funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). At the competition, 15 student teams from each province and territory designed and built their own CubeSat under the guidance of CSA experts and Canadian space representatives. industry. As a result, UVic’s satellite is one of his two post-secondary projects in Canada selected to be part of Saturday’s launch, alongside a satellite built by students at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. I was there.

“It is very remarkable, especially since UVic is not a large school,” says Doknjas. “I think it’s pretty impressive.”

Over 100 full-time researchers, collaborators, and volunteer students from UVic Satellite Design, UBC Orbit, and Simon Fraser University Satellite Design contributed to this project, which began in 2018.

ORCASat is comparable to the size of a 2 liter milk carton or tissue box and weighs only 2.5 kilograms. Once launched into Earth’s orbit, the satellite will act as an artificial star and an orbital reference light source that can be seen with a telescope back to Earth, Doknjas said.

“What we’re trying to do is demonstrate this concept of calibrating a telescope,” he said. “A telescope on the ground looking at the stars is looking at the light they give off and the light that that light passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is constantly changing, and as the light passes through it, Light scatters, but the effects of how light reacts in the atmosphere are not well understood.”

However, the difference between OCASat and real stars is that scientists on Earth can communicate with OCASat, so they can know exactly how bright the satellite is, in addition to how bright it can be seen through a telescope.

“Now you have two separate measurements. You know exactly how bright it really is, and you know it looked bright to you. These two measurements , we can calculate the difference in how much light is lost in the atmosphere,” Doknjas explains.

The concept isn’t new, Doknjas said, but it’s the first time a light source capable of conducting such experiments has been carried into space on a satellite. He added that the technology could also be used in the future for Earth observation and methane detection for climate change.

ORCASat will remain on the International Space Station for about a year before being ejected into Earth’s orbit to collect data, depending on factors such as solar flares and solar radiation that affect the satellite’s lifetime.

---

Do you have any story tips? Email: austin.westphal@saanichnews.com.

Please follow us twitter and Like us on Instagram and Facebook!

Aerospace Science UVic