The Antares from Northrop Grumman is currently on its way to the International Space Station with a payload created by students from Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, and partially funded by a grant from NASA.
Named Phoenix, the payload is a small cube satellite that has been in development for several years. Chief Engineer of the project and an Aerospace Engineering major and a senior at ASU, Jaime Sanchez De La Vega, said that the satellite will be on its own in space. It will have an antenna and the team will try to command it and communicate with it.
The goal of the satellite is to help research the Urban Heat Island effect and take thermal images of seven major American cities, including Phoenix. De La Vega said that due to the retention of the heat of the sun by asphalt and concrete, the team expects to receive data from the satellite and test and calibrate to determine better understand how cities are heating up.
The faculty advisor for the team, Danny Jacobs, said the team started this project four years ago and has made remarkable accomplishments on it since then in terms of funding, recruiting faculty mentors, and building a spacecraft. Often, such accomplishments are made known throughout a college community through poster printing.
The plan is for the astronauts to deploy the satellite in January.
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