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Dec 13, 2006 8:52 pm US/Eastern
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Naval Academy Satellites Are On Board Discovery
by Alex DeMetrick
(WJZ)
When the shuttle Discovery lifted off last Saturday night, tons of payload went with it, but as
WJZ's Alex DeMetrick two very important pieces of equipment not much bigger than Rubik's cubes, were also on board.
Two satellites with systems designed, built, and tested by Naval Academy Midshipmen at the Academy's Satellite Laboratory were launched into space along with the Shuttle Discovery last Saturday.
Now, those satellites will spend future decades orbiting earth and sending valuable information back to transmitters on our planet.
The satellites were designed, built and tested by Midshipmen in the Classes of 2003, 2004 and 2005 under the supervision of Senior Research Engineer Robert Bruninga as a part of the aerospace engineering program.
A metal sphere used to test atmospheric drag was also part of the project. "We try to take off-the-shelf components and make them work, so we can do these relatively cheap," said Midshipman Joe Campbell, who currently works on satellites being designed for future space launches.
Current Naval Academy Midshipmen are working on the next generation Academy satellite, PARKINSONSAT.
The primary mission of the RAFT satellite is tied to the Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Radar which is a major source of satellite tracking data for all spacecraft in the U.S.
This radar helps generate the tracking data used by most satellite tracking systems worldwide. The MARScom satellite is similar to RAFT but operates on Navy-Marine Corps MARS frequencies for volunteer Department of Defense experiments.
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