| dbo:abstract
|
- The University Nanosat Program is a satellite design and fabrication competition for universities. It is jointly administered by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Space Development and Test Wing and the AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate's Spacecraft Technology division. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was involved from the program inception through Nanosat-3. Previous winners of the competition were the University of Georgia Small Satellite Research Laboratory's Satellite, Michigan Technological University's Oculus-ASR, Cornell University's Cornell University Satellite (CUSat), University of Texas at Austin's Formation Autonomy Spacecraft with Thrust, Relnav, Attitude, and Crosslink (FASTRAC) for Nanosat-3 and the joint 3 Corner Satellite (3CS) project by the University of Colorado at Boulder, Arizona State University and New Mexico State University for Nanosat-2. As of February 2011, the 3CS spacecraft and FASTRAC have launched. The program's objective is to train tomorrow's space professionals by providing a rigorous two year concept to flight-ready spacecraft competition for U. S. higher education institutions and to enable small satellite research and development (R&D), integration and flight test. Approximately 4500 college students and 27 institutions of higher learning have been involved in this unique experience since its inception in 1999. (en)
|
