MichSpace

University of Michigan Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) team members Matt Bennett and Sara Spangelo both delivered highly praised presentations at the CubeSat Developers Workshop last week at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. Matt got the workshop rolling as the first speaker to present, and his discussion on the design, development, and delivery of the RAX 3U CubeSat had the whole conference buzzing about its upcoming launch.

Pictured above: Sara Spangelo presenting at Cal Poly

Sara presented her research on optimizing ground station networking and downlinking. She discussed some trailblazing concepts in supporting multiple satellites performing science missions in concert as they collect data, communicate, and downlink to Earth.

YURI’S NIGHT 2010: ANN ARBOR.

Much of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan found their love for space for the first time at Ann Arbor’s first annual Yuri’s Night, a holiday celebrating human space exploration held every year in the vicinity of April 12^th. Yuri’s Night celebrations have spread the world over – more than 200 parties were held this year in 67 countries – the most ever.

In Ann Arbor, Yuri’s Night 2010 was organized by the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, the Michigan Electronic Dance Music Association, and the Russian Student Association. It was held at the Necto nightclub on Wednesday April 14^th. The response from the student and Ann Arbor community was electric. More than 300 people attended, and a student society-wide costume contest attracted 10 participants. The costumes spanned from robots to nanosatellites, to Yuri himself (in the distant future), to NASA’s Area 51 DARPA Project – the ultimate victor of the contest.

The costume contest concluded with a video greeting from one of the co-founders of Yuri’s Night, Loretta Whitesides. She told us that our impact and enthusiasm was not going unnoticed in the space community around the world. She thanked us for coming out in the name of humanity, space, and humanity in space.

The costume contest concluded with a reiteration of Loretta’s message, a transmission from myself which hopefully was received deep within the hearts of all: “You heard Loretta. Tomorrow, we go out and support the endeavors of human space exploration. Tomorrow, we change the world.” I then paused before continuing, “but TONIGHT. Tonight… we dance."

And dance we did. For Yuri, for space, for the future of humanity. Yuri, your dream lives on. We as humans will always be explorers, whether it be the depths of our hearts on the dance floor, or the silent, star-filled depths of outer space. On Yuri’s Night, we didn’t have to choose.

I recently had the honor of judging a design contest for high school students and simply wanted to share my esteem for the two schools that participated. Both Greenhills and Macomb Center for Math and Science put together great presentations and showed some badass Solidworks skillz. Those rovers were sweet guys! I'd also like to give a big thanks to SEDS and the Michigan Mars Rover Team who brought this all together. Keep it up! I would have killed for an opportunity like this in high school.... My only hope is that next year, we can persuade even more teams to participate!