This past year has seen students of theASUSat Program completing the finalassembly and acceptance testing oftheir firstproject, ASUSatl. With ASUSatl's launchscheduled for this October, this project willtransition into its operations phase, also tobe performed on campus by the students.The ASUSat Program continues to set itssights high however, as in addition to thetransition of ASUSatl into operations, thestudents are also embarking upon a numberof additional projects. Two of these, ThreeComer Sat (3ASat) and the DistributedGround Station Network (DGSN), are thesubject ofthis paper.The 3ASat project is a constellation of threesatellites being developed jointly by ArizonaState University (ASU), the University ofColorado at Boulder (CO), and New MexicoState University (NMSU). This projectbegan in response to the AFOSR / DARPAUniversity Nanosatellite Program, a specialtopic of AFRL's TechSat 21 Initiative.Primary mission objectives of 3 A Sat arestereoscopic imaging, virtual formationoperations, innovative communicationsschemes via LEO telecomm constellations,and innovative command and data handling.Additionally, each spacecraft will include ageneric payload envelope to provide eachschool an opportunity to conduct a uniqueexperiment after the constellation objectivesare met. ASU will be flying amicropropulsion experiment in this volume.
展开▼