The Role of Small Satellites in the Establishment of the Gulf Region's First Graduate Level Space Studies Program

The Role of Small Satellites in the Establishment of the Gulf Region's First Graduate Level Space Studies Program

Utah State University, Logan, UT

Yahsat, Northrop Grumman, and Khalifa University created the Gulf region's first master's level advanced studies space program. To date this program has graduated three classes of master's students and received accolades from the UAE Space Agency and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company. The program's primary goal is to develop the resources and work force that the UAE requires to establish itself as a space-faring nation. Integral to this program are small satellites, initially used to train and educate the students and ultimately growing to accommodate new technologies and scientific payloads developed in the UAE. The first of these small satellites, a 1U CubeSat named MYSat-1 was launched in November of 2018 and deployed from the Northrop Grumman Cygnus on 13 February, 2019.

In this paper we present the role small satellites played in the establishment of this program. We discuss the challenges of establishing a satellite program at a university without a formal aerospace curriculum and how the small satellite became the anchor project for the student development. In this context, we explore the advantages of making use of the broadly established small satellite COTS component marketplace relative to the didactical benefits to be gained from having the students develop the new hardware in-house. Finally, we review the process of setting up a new small satellite lab established to be used as the primary resource for developing and testing small satellites in the country.