Session
Technical Session XIII:Education
Abstract
University-class satellites -- that is, spacecraft built by university students for the express purpose of student training -- have been flown since the early '70s. In the last 10 years, however, the trickle of university-class missions became a flood, enabled by (and enabling) the CubeSat class of secondary payloads. Whereas it took 40 years to launch the first 40 university-class spacecraft, now it is not unusual for 40 university-class missions to fly every year.
So what? Other than that clever bit of numerology, why does this matter? We believe that there are three important questions to address:
1) Do these missions matter? Given the 40% failure rate of university missions, do student-built spacecraft succeed often enough to warrant the launch slots they are given?
2) From a greater perspective, are university-class missions worth the investment? Are such programs more effective at meeting certain types of missions than their professional counterparts? Are their educational outcomes consistent with the investment?
3) What are the risks/costs of university-class missions? Specifically, are we accelerating an orbital-debris catastrophe by cluttering Earth orbit with student satellites?
The participants of this conference can provide essential insight to all of those questions. What we bring to the conversation is data: the number of missions, their classifications, rates of mission success and relative risk of fragmentation and collision. This data has been compiled over many years through a combination of launch logs, publications, presentations, press releases and personal communication.
In this paper, we will review the recent history of university-class missions, place them in the context of previous years, and address the questions raised above. In particular, we will show that the seemingly-high failure rate is consistent with the types of missions attempted and the experience of the participants. We will show that there are several types of missions that universities are best-suited to attempt, and that the orbital-debris risk posed by university-class missions (and CubeSats) is overblown.
University-Class Spacecraft by the Numbers: Success, Failure, Debris. (But Mostly Success.)
University-class satellites -- that is, spacecraft built by university students for the express purpose of student training -- have been flown since the early '70s. In the last 10 years, however, the trickle of university-class missions became a flood, enabled by (and enabling) the CubeSat class of secondary payloads. Whereas it took 40 years to launch the first 40 university-class spacecraft, now it is not unusual for 40 university-class missions to fly every year.
So what? Other than that clever bit of numerology, why does this matter? We believe that there are three important questions to address:
1) Do these missions matter? Given the 40% failure rate of university missions, do student-built spacecraft succeed often enough to warrant the launch slots they are given?
2) From a greater perspective, are university-class missions worth the investment? Are such programs more effective at meeting certain types of missions than their professional counterparts? Are their educational outcomes consistent with the investment?
3) What are the risks/costs of university-class missions? Specifically, are we accelerating an orbital-debris catastrophe by cluttering Earth orbit with student satellites?
The participants of this conference can provide essential insight to all of those questions. What we bring to the conversation is data: the number of missions, their classifications, rates of mission success and relative risk of fragmentation and collision. This data has been compiled over many years through a combination of launch logs, publications, presentations, press releases and personal communication.
In this paper, we will review the recent history of university-class missions, place them in the context of previous years, and address the questions raised above. In particular, we will show that the seemingly-high failure rate is consistent with the types of missions attempted and the experience of the participants. We will show that there are several types of missions that universities are best-suited to attempt, and that the orbital-debris risk posed by university-class missions (and CubeSats) is overblown.
