Updated 1/23/08
Flight Program
The Flight Program is the most visible and largest program. It includes all complete life-cycles of projects using platforms such as high altitude balloons, aircraft-based microgravity, sounding rockets, and satellites.
Specifically, the program focuses on giving students the experience of working through a complete project lifecycle from concept through post-flight data analysis, as well as documenting and passing on the effort when graduation or other priorities intervene. The program’s goal is to have multiple projects spanning various levels of complexity and in different phases of design.
University Student Experiment Ride Share (USERS) Sounding Rocket |
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Initiated: January, 2008 The USERS program is a multi-university collaborative project to give student experiments access to space on sounding rockets Contact: Dave Ydoate |
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High Energy Monitoring Instrument for the HASP Balloon |
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Initiated: January, 2008 The High Altitude Student Platform (HASP) is designed to carry up to twelve student payloads to an altitude of about 36 kilometers with flight durations of 15 to 20 hours using a small volume, zero pressure balloon. It is anticipated that the payloads carried by HASP will be designed and built by students and will be used to flight-test compact satellites or prototypes and to fly other small experiments. The High Energy Monitor Instrument (HEMI) is being developed to detect when a gamma ray burst (GRB) occurs and record data on the event. Ultimately, HEMI is intended to be a student instrument for measuring GRBs on a future satellite. As the challenges for developing student satellite hardware are significant, a precursor balloon flight will provide the necessary heritage to enable a more costly and complex project. Contact: Brian Schratz |
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Flyin' Lions (2008) Microgravity Experiment |
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Initiated: December, 2007 The Flyin’ Lions participates in the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program (RGSFOP). The team designs an experiment that requires microgravity (zero-G), writes a proposal, and then travels to Houston, Texas to fly in the C-9 aircraft (the “Vomit Comet”) to complete the experiment. The current project is a dusty plasma experiment that aims to measure the ion drag force that holds 3-D crystalline structures of particles together within a plasma while in microgravity. The team has submitted a proposal and been accepted to the Reduced Gravity Program 2008. As this year’s work is a reflight of last year’s experiment, the semester’s work will focus on applying the changes to the experiment and preparing it for flight. The team must also submit the Test Equipment Data Package and prepare for flight.
Flyin' Lions webpage |
NittanySat |
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Initiated: January, 2007 The mission's objectives include ionospheric science measurements and demonstrations of software-defined radio communications systems, deployable structures, and MEMs technology. The Nanosat team is looking for motivated students in engineering, science, education, public relations, and media majors.
Nanosat 5 Project Web site |
Past Projects
CanSat |
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Initiated: August, 2006 The American Astronautical Society (AAS), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), National Space Grant Consortia (NSGC) and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) have organized an annual student design-build-launch competition for space-related topics. The competition is available to university and high school students from the United States, Canada and Mexico. Although similar competitions exist for other fields of engineering (robots, radio-control airplanes, racing cars, etc.), most space-related competitions today are paper design competitions. While these are worthwhile, they do not give students the satisfaction of being involved with the end-to-end life cycle of a complex engineering project, from conceptual design, through integration and test, actual operation of the system and concluding with a post-mission summary and debrief. This competition fulfills that need! This annual competition allows teams from different universities and high schools to design and build a space-type system, according to the specifications released by the competition organizing committee, and then compete against each at the end of two semesters to determine the winners. The Penn State CanSAT project is geared towards underclassmen in Engineering with an upperclassman leader. The goal of CanSAT is to provide inexperienced underclassmen with a chance to complete a challenging and rapid design cycle before moving on to other space systems projects. CanSat project pageContact: Alex Malone(Aero) or Tyler Boehmer(EE) |
Flyin' Lions (2007) Microgravity Experiment |
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Initiated: December, 2006 The Flyin’ Lions participates in the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program (RGSFOP). The team designs an experiment that requires microgravity (zero-G), writes a proposal, and then travels to Houston, Texas to fly in the C-9 aircraft (the “Vomit Comet”) to complete the experiment. Currently, the team is developing an experiment to measure the ion drag force that exists between particles in a complex plasma. |
ESPRIT (SPIRIT III) |
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Initiated: September, 2003 ESPRIT was the third iteration of Penn State’s SPIRIT sounding rocket program, which began as part of NASA’s Student Launch Program and was funded by the NASA Wallops, the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium, and industry. The ESPRIT project allowed university students to design and build a scientific payload, participate in its launch aboard a NASA sounding rocket, and then analyze the results.
ESPRIT carried into space seven scientific instruments to study the mesosphere and lower ionosphere, an attitude determination suite, and four engineering demonstrations. Throughout the spring and fall 2006-2007, students analyzed the flight data and publishing their results. |
LionSat NanoSatellite |
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Initiated: 2003 LionSat provided students from diverse backgrounds and technical fields the opportunity to develop a small satellite. This mission, which began as part of the University Nanosat Program, required students to apply their classroom education to the design of a flight-worthy spacecraft that would measure properties of the ionosphere. LionSat was intended to travel into orbit on an expendable launch vehicle. |
Deep Space Test Bed (CATS) |
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Initiated: March 2005 The CATS (Characterization of Aerosols in the Troposphere and the Stratosphere) payload launched on NASA’s new Deep Space Test Bed (DSTB) facility in June of 2005. The payload used a digital camera and a spectrometer coupled to a telescope to detect trace chemicals in the atmosphere. The DSTB was lifted by a 40-million-cubic-foot scientific balloon to an altitude of about 120,000 feet, or nearly 23 miles. The payload identified pollution-related aerosols -- solid or liquid particles in the air -- in the troposphere, which rise eight miles above sea level, and the stratosphere. |
SPIRIT II Sounding Rocket |
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Initiated:September 2000 The 39-foot SPIRIT II Rocket launched successfully on October 3rd 2003 at 10:30 A.M. The rocket reached an apogee of 125 km and was successfully recovered from the Atlantic ocean. The successful launch of this rocket was largely due to the countless man-hours put in by many dedicated students. The rocket's mission was to take wind measurements in the upper atmosphere in order to study atmospheric dynamics. The rocket had a total of five experiments: an integrated electron counter (IEC), a direct current probe (DC probe), a trimethyl aluminum chemical release (TMA), a chaff experiment and a GPS sphere. |
Flyin' Lions 2001 |
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Flight:2001
The Flyin' Lions demonstrated their active Subject Load Device (SLD) -- an instrument that uses computers to monitor the position of exercising astronauts in microgravity and compensates to allow for greater range of movement and exercise variation.
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Get Away Special (GAS), Space Shuttle Endeavor, STS-108 |
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 (left) A GetAway Special canister (GAS can) filled with student experiments installed in Endeavor's payload bay.(right) Endeavor lift-off. |
Launch:2001 The GAS project has provided a special opportunity for about 50 students to design and build a payload to be flown on the Space Shuttle. The experiments were designed and fabricated by students working as volunteers or as part of the course credit for EE/AERO 492 (Introduction to Space Physics) or as an independent study. Three experiments were prepared which investigate plant growth in space, the magnetic field environment in the shuttle, and the acoustic signature for collisions on the shuttle by space debris. |
Spirit 1 |
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Launch: May 2000
SPIRIT provides the opportunity for students from a wide range of educational backgrounds to gain hands-on experience in the design and fabrication of a research sounding rocket. The 30-month project, part of the NASA Student Launch Program, enhances classroom experience while emphasizing creativity, collaborative learning and time management skills. |
Get Away Special, Space Shuttle Endeavor STS-77 |
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 Endeavor is being prepared for liftoff on the first Shuttle flight of 1996, Mission STS-72, at 4:18 am EST, January 11. |
Initiated:1992 The Penn State canister that was bolted to the Space Shuttle bay, among a dozen of its peers, for the May 19, 1996, launch, measured 32 inches tall and 27 inches around. It held three experiments -- one to record the pings made by space junk hitting the Shuttle, one to measure the magnetic field in and around the spacecraft, the third to find the effects of cosmic radiation on certain computer memory chips -- altogether the work of some 100 engineering students over four years. |
Get Away Special, Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-61C |
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 The Space Shuttle Columbia clears the launch tower at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex. |
Launch: January 1986. |