Lessons Learned from a Remote Summer Internship Program: Student-Built 1U COTS CubeSats
Abstract
The Queensborough Community College (QCC) of the City University of New York (CUNY), a Hispanic and minority-serving institution, has been very successful at engaging undergraduate students in space weather research for the past five years. Most recently, the program has added CubeSats as a topic to engage students in space technology. CubeSats have started playing an increasingly larger role in scientific research and exploration, as demonstrated by NASA’s recent successful Insight Mission. An ongoing challenge in undergraduate engineering and science education is providing students with hands-on experience in the development of space technology, and to engage them in discovering new knowledge. With funding from NASA MUREP, this past summer, students participated in a remote 8-weeks QCC-NASA summer internship, in which they were challenged to build a 1U CubeSat using only commercial-off-the-shelf components (COTS). Students CubeSats projects involved both technology demonstrations and scientific payloads. This paper discusses some of the programmatic and technical successes and challenges faced by students during the summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using experiences and lessons learned from this project, strategies are offered on how to implement such a program either during the summer or academic year.
Lessons Learned from a Remote Summer Internship Program: Student-Built 1U COTS CubeSats
Utah State University, Logan, UT
The Queensborough Community College (QCC) of the City University of New York (CUNY), a Hispanic and minority-serving institution, has been very successful at engaging undergraduate students in space weather research for the past five years. Most recently, the program has added CubeSats as a topic to engage students in space technology. CubeSats have started playing an increasingly larger role in scientific research and exploration, as demonstrated by NASA’s recent successful Insight Mission. An ongoing challenge in undergraduate engineering and science education is providing students with hands-on experience in the development of space technology, and to engage them in discovering new knowledge. With funding from NASA MUREP, this past summer, students participated in a remote 8-weeks QCC-NASA summer internship, in which they were challenged to build a 1U CubeSat using only commercial-off-the-shelf components (COTS). Students CubeSats projects involved both technology demonstrations and scientific payloads. This paper discusses some of the programmatic and technical successes and challenges faced by students during the summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using experiences and lessons learned from this project, strategies are offered on how to implement such a program either during the summer or academic year.
