Michigan Tech Students Use Altia HMI Software for NanoSat Project
Colorado Springs, Colo., March 23, 2009 – Altia is proud to announce their partnership with Michigan Technological University’s Aerospace Enterprise student organization on their entry for the University NanoSatellite Competition, organized by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The objectives of the NanoSat competition are to educate and train up-and-coming aerospace engineers and to enable small satellite research and development. Each university team selected for the competition is granted the freedom to develop their own mission and construct a satellite capable of executing this mission.
The seventy-member Michigan Tech team, led by Professor Brad King and students Jeff Katalenich and Peter Radecki, has applied Altia’s HMI development tools to create the ground control interfaces necessary to control and receive data from their NanoSat. With Altia Design, the team has been able to create compelling custom user interfaces prototypes that can be shared between systems groups, tested and quickly modified. Once verified, the interface graphics are connected to the underlying application.
Michigan Tech’s satellite, the Oculus, was designed to image and track resident space objects. Two small releasable payloads, attached to the Oculus, are released – one at a time – from the orbiting satellite. Cameras track their movement to detect distant illuminated objects. The satellite must run three main software tasks during the mission: navigation and control, health/maintenance and telecommunications. Numerous hardware components are required to accomplish these tasks, including a gyroscope (to verify the satellite’s orientation), a magnetometer (that calculates the satellite’s orientation from the Earth’s magnetic field) and actuators (which use data from the gyroscope and magnetometer to move the satellite). Reaction wheels and magnetic torque rods are employed to orient the satellite. An onboard PC-104 computer is available to manage this plethora of sensors, hardware and software – and is stacked with two analog to digital boards, an 8-bit Octal Serial Communication Interface, two frame grabbers to communicate with the cameras and an FPGA.
Michigan Tech was awarded third place overall for their NanoSat entry in the Flight Competition Review, which took place in Albuquerque, NM in January 2009. The team was also granted an award for the best K-12 educational outreach program. While the first phase of the competition is complete, Michigan Tech is already involved in the second stage of the NanoSat competition, which culminates in a potential launch opportunity. The Michigan Tech team will continue to utilize Altia interfaces as part of their program.
Altia congratulates the Michigan Tech team on their third place win – and we wish them all the best as they begin the next cycle of competition!
For more information about the University Nanosatellite Competition, visit www.vs.afrl.af.mil/UNP.
For more information about Michigan Tech’s NanoSat team, visit www.aerospace.mtu.edu/aeroweb.
For more information about Altia’s GUI development and graphics code generation tools, visit www.altia.com.
Press Contact Jason Williamson | Editorial Contact Paul de Curnou |