The Illinois Observing Nanosatellite (ION) is the first CubeSat mission developed by the students of

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

. The satellite was lost in the failure of the

Dnepr Dnepr may refer to: *Dnieper, a river flowing through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea * Dnepr (motorcycle), a Ukraininan motocycle brand * Dnepr (rocket), a 1999 space launch vehicle *Dnepr radar Dnepr may refer to: *Dnieper, a river ...

launch on 26 July 2006. Completed in April 2005 as a part of the Illinois Tiny Satellite Initiative, the satellite took almost four years to be designed, built and tested by an interdisciplinary team of student engineers. The payloads included a

photometer A photometer is an instrument that measures the strength of electromagnetic radiation in the range from ultraviolet to infrared and including the visible spectrum. Most photometers convert light into an electric current using a photoresistor, ph ...

, a micro-thruster and a camera.

Mission objectives

The science and technology objectives of the ION-1 mission were aimed at advancing key enabling technologies for CubeSats: #Measurement of oxygen intensity in Earth's ionosphere to understand how energy transfers occur across large regions #Test the MicroVacuum Arc Thruster (µVAT), a versatile small satellite propulsion technology for lateral movement and fine-control of attitude #Test the SID processor board designed specifically for small satellites in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

(LEO) #Test a small CMOS camera for Earth imaging #Demonstrate attitude stabilization on a CubeSat

Future missions at UIUC

ION-1 was built using the IlliniSat-1 bus. The upgraded IlliniSat-2 bus is now under development for missions such as Lower Atmosphere Ionosphere Coupling Experiment (LAICE) and the CubeSail, both to be launched in 2016.
NASA to launch two satellites developed by Illinois faculty, retrieved 17 October 2014

References

CubeSats Satellite launch failures Spacecraft launched in 2006 Student satellites Space accidents and incidents in Kazakhstan {{US-spacecraft-stub