A UGA research laboratory led by undergraduate students is one of only two university research programs chosen by the United States Air Force to build and launch satellites into space.
The UGA Small Satellite Research Laboratory includes more than 45 members working to build two CubeSats for low Earth orbit. CubeSats are a specialized class of miniaturized satellite that can be deployed more cheaply than larger spacecraft.
UGA’s winning satellite design is known as MOCI, short for Multi-view Onboard Computational Imager. This spacecraft is equipped with a camera that will capture images of Earth’s surface, which may be used to create 3-D models of structures on the Earth.
This mission is of great interest to the Air Force and the satellite community because of its on-board processing capabilities. This technology will allow large amounts of data to be processed on board the spacecraft before sending a finished product back to Earth.
The competition is part of the U.S. Air Force’s Research Laboratory University Nanosatellite Program, or UNP. The UGA Small Satellite Research Laboratory is supported by faculty from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering.
This brief appeared in the spring 2018 issue of Research Magazine. The original press release is available at https://news.uga.edu/uga-student-satellite-team-one-two-air-force-research-lab-winners/.
