MichSpace

Space can really suck sometimes...

I mean this in a good way though, because we can't get better at designing stuff that goes into space unless we have problems along the way, right? As the Project Manager for the M-Cubed CubeSat at Michigan, I've seen the project grow from the beginning. All the great times where we nail a presentation, hit a technical milestone, or get selected to be launched into space (huttah!). But for every good thing that happens, there are at least five problems that had to be overcome, and that's just the way it is.

For those of you that don't know, M-Cubed is the Michigan Multipurpose Minisatellite. At the time we chose the acronym,we had no idea that JPL also had an M-Cubed of their own (I swear! - see here). The Michigan M-Cubed is a 1U CubeSat that will be building off of the success of the RAX CubeSat developed at UM to build more capability and expertise into the Michigan Nanosat Pipeline. M-Cubed is (coincidentally) collaborating with JPL as a technology demonstration for components and algorithms that will be used on the second ACE mission. The team is very excited about this collaboration, and it is why we will be launching our little cube into the first fairly elliptical orbit for CubeSats this coming fall!

The team has been working hard lately to build our Engineering Unit (the one we can push until it breaks) in preparation for our environmental testing. We've had a number of issues crop up lately that are causing headaches around the team, most notably we have had some problems securing the proper vibe facilities to perform this testing. But the good news is that we have the payload from JPL in house now and are performing integrated testing with it! We just recently performed a fit check with all of our boards and the JPL payload and everything fits nicely (see picture).

Granted, we're not where we need to be yet, ribbon cables are bending too much, we need to find better connectors, and some of the circuit boards need some revision, but overall we're happy to have gotten to this point. As I said before, we learn more when we encounter tough engineering (and sometimes logistical) problems. All the experience we're gaining as a team from these current problems will save us time when we build our flight unit, and when all of us get into industry (hopefully).

-Michael