Last week, Utah State University hosted the annual Small Satellite Conference, affectionately referred to as Small Sat.
Small Sat visitors that entered the conference's poster-viewing sessions were greeted by researchers from numerous international businesses, academic institutions, and government organizations — including, of course, NASA.
“We're developing the handheld universal lunar camera. It's the camera the astronauts will be taking to the moon for the Artemis 3 mission,” said Jeremy Myers, NASA’s engineering lead for their handheld universal lunar camera. He presents not only the current state of their research, but also looks to the future.
“We won't have humans on the surface till Artemis 3, and we're at the point where we've done redesign and modifications of this camera such that we'll be prepared for that Artemis 3 mission, so that everyone will enjoy both pictures and videos from the lunar surface when humans return,” he said.
But not all presenters here look to the moon. Others seek to tackle issues back on Earth.
“We collect underground water level, soil moisture, precipitation, air temperature, and humidity every 10 minutes,” said Shinsaku Nakamura, from Space Systems Japan. Nakamura is on a team developing multi-spectral satellite sensors to detect soil moisture and underground water levels in Indonesia. He hopes their work can be used as a low-cost method to aid in development and conservation decisions.
“Because, mainly for Indonesian people, who want to develop the ground, some areas we have to maintain the forest or peatland, while others can be developed for agricultural fields or houses,” Nakamura said.
And he’s not the only one whose research deals with issues back on Earth … or at least around Earth. Hannah Grauer of Caltech researches detecting space debris.
“So space debris is kind of like debris on Earth," she said. "It's just objects up in space that are basically garbage.”
This garbage is more than just unsightly. It can severely damage satellites, and every year there’s more of it.
Though Grauer and her team’s work is still early in development, and currently focuses on detection, their goal is to eventually develop something fully autonomous.
“Ideally, we're just going to have a spacecraft that's up there kind of on its own, just doing this debris removal work without humans needing to operate it,” she said.
Considering humanity launches thousands of satellites annually, that work will only be more essential as time goes on.
