Artemis team satellite launch a success
By NIKKI COLLINS
A six-story commercial rocket carrying three satellites built by Santa Clara University engineering students was launched at Space Launch Complex Seven, Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, Calif., at 7 p.m. yesterday.
"It wasn't jump-out-of-your-seat exciting," Dina Hadi, an engineer who worked on the project, said. "It was an odd contentment."
The rocket, otherwise known as the Orbital Suborbital Program Space Launch Vehicle, lifted four payloads of satellites into orbit, including three small satellites built last year at Santa Clara by six female engineering students known as the "Artemis" team - named after the Greek goddess of hunting and the moon. The team was given a spot on the rocket before they began their project.
"We were very fortunate to be a student team that had a launch before we started," Artemis engineer Theresa Kuhlman said. "Usually you have to solicit a launch."
The smallest of the three satellites was built to prove that a satellite of such a small size can in fact be sent into outer space, according to Hadi and Kuhlman.
The rocket came within two minutes of liftoff during the last scheduled launch date - Friday, Jan. 14, but was postponed when an automatic launch sequence was unsuccessful. The launch was also delayed by low battery power in the rocket's electronics systems. The announcement of the new launch date was delayed because of problems in finding replacement batteries for part of the rocket's self-destruct package, but was announced late Tuesday by TRW, the aerospace firm that built the rocket.
The rocket is a hybrid of two former military rockets, the Minuteman II ICBM and the Pegasus XL. Orbital Sciences Corporation created the rocket as part of an Air Force effort to use surplus Minuteman components for spacelifting payloads into polar orbit.
A total of 12 satellites are carried by the rocket including ones built by students from the U.S. Air Force Academy, Weber State University, Arizona State University and Stanford University. The Santa Clara satellites are riding "piggyback" on the Stanford satellite, until they are ejected into orbit.
"We [the satellites] won't be deployed for several weeks," Kuhlman said.
Satellite designer Amy Slaughterbeck is in a master's program at Santa Clara. Other members of the Artemis project, Corina Hu, Maureen Breiling and Adelia Valdez are graduate students at other universities, while Dina Hadi and Theresa Kuhlman are employed at Silicon Valley firms. All but two of the engineers attended a launch reception hosted by Dean of the Santa Clara School of Engineering Terry Shoup in the Bannan Engineering building. Breiling and Valdez were out of the state at their respective schools.
The Santa Clara project is under the direction of Co-director of the Santa Clara Remote Extreme Environment Mechanisms Laboratory Christopher Kitts.
For more information about the project, see http://screem.engr.scu.edu/artemis.
Videos and stills of the launch can be obtained by contacting Vandenberg Public Affairs, at 805-606-3595.