Facilities
Since beginning in 2005, AggieSat Lab has either acquired or been provided access to numerous facilities at Texas A&M, including both off-campus and on-campus offices. Our offices are used for design, hardware fabrication and satellite research for the Aerospace department.
AggieSat Lab Facilties
Several facilities are directly controlled by AggieSat Lab and are at our disposal at any time for our various projects. These facilities include our original offices out at the University Services Building, our new offices and labs at the Munnerlyn Building, and lastly our ground station out at Texas A&M's Riverside campus.
Munnerlyn Building
Assembly Lab
All current prototyping and assembly of physical hardware is conducted in our Munnerlyn based assembly Lab. Student begin prototyping by developing hardware designs within our Team AggieSat room. Upon completion and approval of their hardware designs, students will begin assembling rudimentary hardware mockups using either electronic breadboards or foam material. Once a design mockup has been proven to meet a student's original specifications that student will begin assembly of a PCB board or structure out of design materials. Additionally, our Assembly Lab is used for building subassemblies and incorporating them into flight units, satellites built for launch into space.
Team AggieSat
Our Team AggieSat room is based on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Team X concept where individuals from every engineering discipline can iterate through trades studies to determine what hardware is best for each subsystem, and what requirements that hardware will have on the rest of the satellite. By organizing all students together in a single place at the same time we're able to discover and correct issues quickly.
Conference Room
Presentations, tours, and project meetings are held primarily in our conference room when direct use of the AggieSat Lab network is not required.
Riverside Campus
Riverside Campus
AggieSat Lab has established its first ground station for satellite operations at the Texas A&M Riverside campus. This facility provides 440 MHz and 2.4 GHz services for the AggieSat2 mission and is upgradable for future amateur and university satellite operations. The facility consists of indoor rack space for electronics and a 30' antenna tower for satellite uplink and downlink. The Riverside Ground Station Facility can be remotely linked to the main AggieSat office at the main campus Munnerlyn building for flight operations.
Riverside Campus is the former Bryan Air Force Base facility and is located North West of College Station, Texas. The University has owned the base for many years and it is host to a diverse range of Texas A&M laboratories and facilities. Riverside provides AggieSat Lab a large, isolated, "big sky" location for satellite work. AggieSat Lab would like to thank the Texas A&M Telecom and Physical Plant departments for support in acquiring and configuring the space. This space provides a secure area for antenna hardware and protected spaces for ground station electronics.
University Services Building
Graduate Office
Initially, this office was used for our business team for organizing recruitment efforts, managing documentation control and handling all fiscal matters. After 2006, this office was converted for use by our graduate students for design and research. Now this office is empty and set aside for future use.
Engineering Office
Prior to acquiring our Team AggieSat room, the Engineering office was used by all our engineering majors for designing flight hardware and testing control software. Once the Team AggieSat room was established, all engineering work moved over to that office, while the Engineering office was converted for use for meetings and storage of servers and books. Now this office is empty and set aside for future use.
Assembly Lab
Throughout AggieSat1 and most of AggieSat2, the Assembly Lab provided a location for hardware fabrication and testing. We were able to prototype each subsystem, run those subsystems through their own test procedures and integrate them into our flatsats. Once Munnerlyn was accessible, we moved our equipment into our new Assembly Lab. Now this office is empty and set aside for future use.
Team AggieSat
After its initial acquirement, this office was utilized as our Team AggieSat room, similar to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Team X concept. This room provided us a location to centrally locate our computers, network and student engineers from every discipline to conduct trade studies for potential and actual missions. Now this office is empty and set aside for future use.