M-Cubed is a

miniaturized satellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites ca ...

built by students at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in a joint project run by the Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL) and JPL. It is an example of the popular

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...

design for amateur satellites. It was launched from

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg Sp ...

on October 28, 2011 atop a

Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family and entered service in 1989. Delta II vehicles included the Delta 6000, and the two later Delta 7000 va ...

rocket. M-Cubed was launched as a secondary payload to the

Suomi NPP The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), previously known as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) and NPP-Bridge, is a weather satellite operated by the United States ...

satellite, along with

AubieSat-1 AubieSat-1 (OSCAR-71) is a CubeSat designed, built, and tested by undergraduate students at Auburn University. It was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base October 28, 2011 atop a Delta II rocket. This was a multi-payload mission with five other ...

, DICE-1, DICE-2,

Explorer-1 Prime Explorer-1 rime'', also known as E1P and Electra, was a CubeSat-class picosatellite built by the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL) at Montana State University. It was launched aboard a Taurus-XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Ba ...

, and

RAX-2 RAX-2 (Radio Aurora Explorer 2) is a CubeSat satellite built as a collaboration between SRI International and students at the University of Michigan College of Engineering. It is the second spacecraft in the RAX mission. The RAX-1 mission ended af ...

. M-Cubed, short for Michigan Multipurpose Minisat, was designed as a technology demonstrator for a new

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...

-based image processing system intended for a future

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

mission, Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem, recommended by the

Earth Science Decadal Survey The ''Earth Science Decadal Survey'' (in full: ''U.S. National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space'') is a publication of the United States National Research Council that identifies key research priori ...

. The mission was also intended to validate the

satellite bus A satellite bus (or spacecraft bus) is the main body and structural component of a satellite or spacecraft, in which the payload and all scientific instruments are held. Bus-derived satellites are opposed to specially produced satellites. Bus- ...

design for use in future cubesat missions. The satellite uses a passive

magnetorquer A magnetorquer or magnetic torquer (also known as a torque rod) is a satellite system for attitude control, detumbling, and stabilization built from electromagnetic coils. The magnetorquer creates a magnetic dipole that interfaces with an ambient ma ...

for

attitude control Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an aerospace vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc. Controlling vehicle ...

, consisting of a large

permanent magnet A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, steel, nickel ...

that aligns the satellite with the Earth's magnetic field. On-board control is provided by a Taskit Stamp9G20

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs ( processor cores) along with memory and programmabl ...

running

Real time Linux RTLinux is a hard realtime real-time operating system (RTOS) microkernel that runs the entire Linux operating system as a fully preemptive process. The hard real-time property makes it possible to control robots, data acquisition systems, manu ...

. Following launch, MXL was unable to command M-Cubed, and observed anomalies in its transmitted data. MXL concluded that the M-Cubed CubeSat became magnetically conjoined to Explorer-1 rime a second CubeSat released at the same time, via both satellites' attitude control magnets. This is the first recorded instance of two satellites unintentionally and non-destructively latching together. As a result of this incident, M-Cubed was unable to complete its mission. The M-Cubed mission was successfully re-flown as MCubed-2, launched on December 6, 2013.

References

External links

*
AMSAT - Satellite Detail - MCubed
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See also

References

External links