The 38th Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University attracts people from a wide range of countries, including Taiwan, India, Japan, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Thailand, and many others.
This year’s conference focused on automation in small satellite systems and attracts many industry and government representatives. Also in attendance were representatives of numerous academic institutions.
Andrew Greenberg is a senior instructor at Portland State University.
“Yeah, so there are a ton of universities," Greenberg said. "There's probably 30 universities here that come from all around the world.”
He and his team are a model for collaboration.
“We develop open source satellites. The satellites are little, teeny, tiny satellites called CubeSats, and we've come all the way from Portland to share what we've worked on and learn about other university groups working on satellites,” Greenberg said.
There are quite a few groups at Small Sat working on that.
“So the team was organized in 1978 and that's the year that NASA announced the getaway special program,” said Ethan Wayland, the team coordinator for the Getaway Special Team, an undergraduate extracurricular program at USU. He said their most recent satellite was selected by NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.
“It spent several years in development, and then back in January 2022 it was launched on a SpaceX rocket on a International Space Station resupply mission," Wayland said. "Went up to the space station, and when the astronauts had free time, they basically, very technically, shoved our satellite out into space, and it went to orbit that way, which is pretty cool."
These aren't the only student groups in attendance.
Yiyu Chang, who uses the English name Jesse, is from Taiwan National Central University.
One aspect of their research focuses on low earth orbit.
“Because the lower earth orbit, it has a very thin atmosphere, so it will cause drag force for the satellite,” Chang said.
Other students and researchers hail from locations like Cambodia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and Kentucky.
“My name is Mila Lane Shearer, and I'm an undergraduate student at Morehead State University in eastern Kentucky. We are here to represent our school and also our Space Science Center,” one student said.
Their school and space center service NASA and other private companies, while also providing opportunities for original research. And Shearer isn't alone in representing U.S. universities.
Stanley Smykowski is an undergraduate student at the University at Buffalo.
“What we have here today is just showcasing our lab and our hard work of what we've done so far. That includes a 6U satellite that's going to look up at Geo and use glint data to characterize and analyze satellites in geo orbit,” he said.
That satellite, called GLADOS, is in essence a proof of concept mission, which puts it in good company among so many other early career researchers.
Sae Ogoshi is a graduate student at the University of Tokyo.
Her research focuses on GPS technology for future moon-based civilizations.
“Because if you want to live on the moon, you have to know where you are,” Ogoshi said.
But the technology here doesn’t only focus on the far future — some of it features present educational opportunities.
Jillian Russell is the MEMESat program manager from the University of Georgia.
"MEMESat-1, the satellite that we both work on, is a cubesat that is geared towards allowing K through 12 students to be able to have access to space,” she said.
They plan to do this by allowing students to send and receive popular internet memes from space. They hope it will foster engagement and collaboration.
"We all come here and we work to kind of show off our designs and show off our research, publish papers, things like that," Greenberg said. "And the students get to meet each other too, which is really great, because eventually these people go into industry and work together in industry.”
Though next year the event will be hosted in Salt Lake City rather than Logan, the conference aims to continue its legacy of collaboration, exchange, and fostering future leaders for many years to come.
