The AggieSat Lab is a Student Satellite Program under the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University that is currently involved in two satellite projects, AggieSat2 and AggieSat3. The principal investigator, Dr. Helen Reed, joined Texas A&M as Head of the Aerospace Department in December of 2004, bringing with her the lab and 11+ years of experience in space flight, satellite design, and student education from Arizona State University. Being a student organization at Texas A&M provides lab members with opportunities to work with students from other departments in coordinating both satellites through the design and fabrication process. With students from all majors working together, AggieSat Lab provides an exemplary learning environment for undergraduate students.
AggieSat Lab is open to all Texas A&M students. Undergraduates and graduates of all majors interested in participating in satellite design, fabrication and testing can call us at our primary number, (979) 845-2826, or use our Contact Us form listed above.
Recruiting Events
As recruiting events are planned and established by our Lab we'll post the event descriptions, times and locations here.
IMAX Movie
September 4th @ Rudder Theater @ 6:30 PM
Open to all Engineering and Business majors at Texas A&M University. An orientation meeting will be held on September 4th at Rudder Theatre. We'll be featuring an IMAX movie, "The Dream is Alive". Doors open at 6:30 PM. The IMAX movie will last until 8 PM. Students attending will have an oppotunity to learn about AggieSat Lab, ask questions of students who are already participating at AggieSat and watch an IMAX movie.
MSC Open House
August 31th @ Memorial Student Center
News Events
August 13, 2008 - 9:45am
After two days of testing, our Flight software has passed the first four test procedures. Now there only remains two prior to concluding our tests and releasing our Flight software. One test is a GPS recording and downlinking test which will be conducted this morning. The final test will be a satellite health test to verify our on-board health manager. The health manager test is split into two parts; a 24-hour real time clock test and a second test to record health data, charge the batteries properly and downlink data to our ground support software. Our 24-hour real time clock test is to insure our on-board clock can remain accurate over an extended period of time. This capability will be crucial when setting communication windows or GPS recording sessions.
August 10, 2008
Client Release Candidate 4 has begun this week and will continue through the 22nd of August. This should allow any remaining noteworthy additions to be completed and tested prior to school starting on the 25th. Our primary goals for this release candidate include the implementation of several outstanding satellite commands and a new context help system. Several commands have not been implemented in either our primary Client control panels or our command list. These commands have not been needed in past months as they are associated generally with testing. However, we are switching our testing procedures over to our Client so therefore those commands will need to be implemented.
Several of our graduate students have traveled to Utah for the Small Satellite Conference taking place the 11th through the 14th. There they will present our progress with AggieSat2, its mission and its future implications for AggieSat3 and our Lab. Presentation material used at the Small Satellite Conference will be posted on our website later this week.
August 8, 2008
We've retrieved pictures from a GPS test conducted two months ago on top of the North Campus Garage. NASA requires at least 4 satellites to be visible for their data to be valid. Therefore we sought the highest platform available which happen to be the North Campus Garage attached to our building. AggieSat Team members carefully carted our Engineering Design Unit up five flights of stairs to the top parking lot of the garage. A thirty minute recording session was performed while our EDU was nested in a cardboard box on the garage brick railing. After completing the recoding session we extracted our GPS data using an SD Card reader. Unfortunately we were not able to receive any GPS satellites during our recording session. Later discussions lead to a discovery of damage to our GPS antenna cable. Future tests will be conducted using a new GPS antenna in hopes of successfully recording data from multiple satellites.
Client, Release Candidate 3, has been released today as anticipated with all planned features implemented. Our Client software now has the ability to download GPS data from multiple recording sessions and to upload new flight software directly to our satellite. The flight software upload test was therefore conducted using Flight-1.0-rc6, currently under development, with complete success. Preliminary work has been made to implement an update tool, context help menu and a mock version of our Flight software for ground support training. Release Candidate 4 goals and expectations will be posted later this week after the software team has finalized Release Candidate 3.
In addition to Client, work on our flight software has been progressing on schedule with final release expected by late next week. Several issues were encountered yesterday while developing the Client including an error within the GPS manager. That issue along with an issue with beaconing were immediately corrected and tested prior to closing the issues out. Beginning early next week members of AggieSat Lab will begin putting our flight software through a software release process that tests software features for functionality.
August 6, 2008
Our Engineering Design Unit was fully assembled with several modifications required for radio tests. Only a single solar panel, on the patch antenna side, was attached to the satellite. Cables connecting the antennas to our on-board radios were disconnected, attached to cable extensions and left protruding from the satellite. Those cables would be used later by students from the Electrical Engineering Department to calculate the antenna resonance frequencies.
Yesterday's radio tests were originally planned to take place outdoors but were moved inside as a consequence of Hurricane Edouard. A ten foot ladder with a secure mount was used to grasp our EDU above ground level to diminish interference. We were able to successfully test our monopole antenna used for downlink communications and therefore determine its resonance frequency. Tests on our uplink patch antenna were unsuccessful owing to a likely faulty antenna cable. After removing the faulty cable, a replacement was fabricated and tested to assure continuity. A repeat of yesterday's test would be conducted using the new patch antenna cable and today's originally scheduled test using our ground support hardware would be postponed until next week.
A second test was conducted this afternoon using the new cable with our uplink patch antenna. Though the test was successful, two resonance frequencies were discovered. An initial discussion with a professor within the Electrical Engineering Department has lead to the conclusion that interference from our solar panel is causing the multiple resonance frequencies. Therefore AggieSat Lab members, over the next week, will look into possible solutions for isolating the patch antenna from interference caused by the solar panel. Further tests will then continue starting next Friday with a repeat test of the patch antenna followed by a test of our ground support hardware.
August 4, 2008
Radio tests have been delayed by a day and will therefore take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. This delay was caused by additional time needed to assemble solar panels for our Engineering Design Unit. At least two solar panels, four solar cells in a circular configuration, are essential to assure proper gain measurements.
Work has now begun on our new Content Management System, CMS-1.0-rc1, which will conclude sometime in October or November. Our CMS software will provide a framework for our website and allow for more interactive features. Those features will include a team blog system, photo and video galleries, and live data as we receive it from our satellite.
August 2, 2008
On July 27 Release Candidate 2 of our Client software, in support of AggieSat2, was released. Included with rc2 is a new graphical user interface designed and implemented to support a user friendly interface with our satellite. In addition to a new GUI, the capability to download GPS data was also implemented along with an event logging system for later data analysis. Already our Client software has performed admirably during tests with our Engineering Design Unit.
Work has now begone on Release Candidate 3 which will provide software upload capabilities for our satellite, correct bugs found during testing of rc2 and improve run-time performance. Expected release date for rc3 is August 8, just prior to Flight Unit assembly. In the past week we've managed to implement the capability to download Health Records recorded and stored by our on-board flight software and implement a log view to display historical health data retrieved from the satellite.
On Monday and Tuesday of this upcoming week, tests will be conducted by members of AggieSat Lab and students within the Electrical Engineering Department to qualify our flight radio capabilities. They'll be conducting tests to determine gain patterns and effective radiated power output for both our flight and ground communication systems.