ArduSat is equipped with a suite of a dozen sensors, camera, and user programmable Arduino microprocessors. Students can design and run their own experiment in space, control the satellite camera to take pictures of our earth or star constellations, and take measurements from sensors including Geiger counters, a spectrometer, and more.

NanoSatisfi provides an interactive education opportunity for students to design and run their own experiment in space using in-orbit nano-satellites. The online curriculum is delivered through the ArduSat Mission Control Center. The curriculum takes students through a basic understanding of Arduino programming, satellite basics, relevant science topics related to the satellite sensors, and the process of running an experiment in space. A pre-designed experiment track is available for beginner students, while more advanced students can pick and choose our tutorials to create their own experiment idea. The curriculum culminates in control of a satellite so that students can collect data from space and complete the analysis for their experiment.

The course can be completed as quickly as two weeks or extended to a full semester based on student capabilities and teacher priorities.

Example experiments student can learn:

• Build a 3D picture of Earth’s Magnetic Field
• Track meteor / near-Earth objects
• Detect high-energy radiation
• Make spectrograph of the sun
• Geo-caching in Space
• Social game - Heat the Sat
• Images from Space competition
• Geiger Counter bingo from Space
• Laser tag in Space
• Measure the South Atlantic Anomaly
• Basic radio astronomy / pulsar detection
• Build a solar activity meter
• Weatherman - look at clouds from above
• Detect atomic oxygen damage
• Learn to operate a satellite
• Develop space sensor development
• Training of Trainers (ToT)
• Space mission design

Ignite your student’s imagination and creativity!

What is ArduSat?

The satellite is a 1U Cubesat, measuring 4-inches (10cm) cubed on average, although the exact specifications are 10cm x 10cm x 11.4cm and weighing 2.86 lb (1.3 kg), or roughly the size of a small toaster.

ArduSat is a miniature cubic satellite, measuring 10 cm along each edge and weighing about 1 kg. Onboard it will have a suite of 25+ sensors, including three cameras, a Geiger counter, spectrometer, magnetometer and more. The sensors are connected to a bank of user-programmable Arduino processors, which run your application or experiment, gathering data from the space environment.

The Arduinos can also read status data from the satellite (like orbit position, per-system power usage, board temperature, etc.), so you can also run tests on the satellite itself. Check out our YouTube Channel for technical details and up-to-date videos of the payload development.

To run your application, experiment or steer the camera you can write your own code from scratch, leverage existing codes available on the internet or use one of the templates we will make available to our backers, creating a growing library of code elements.

What you can do with ArduSat?

To get your creative cogs turning, here are just a few of the ideas the ArduSat developers are cooking up. For even more application challenges and some ideas for high school and university student projects, check out our Ideas page and get commenting! http://tinyurl.com/ArduSatAppIdeas

SCIENCE: Meteor Hunter - Small meteors that strike the atmosphere every day created trails of ionized gas in the atmosphere in the upper atmosphere. Write an experiment to try and detect meteor impacts, by listening for radio stations beyond the horizon, reflected by the meteor trails!

ENGINEERING: Your Eye in the Sky - Try writing an app that would synchronize the output of a head mounted-gyro to the steering system on the satellite. If you’re feeling really ambitious, try downlinking the attitude vector in real-time to watch the satellite follow your head - you could even tie-in your head-steering to our program that takes pictures! (Talk to Joel if you’re interested in this experiment!)

ENGINEERING: Point-and-shoot - The following settings can be set on the camera: "exposure, gamma, gain, white balance, color matrix, windowing". Try designing an algorithm that fine-tunes the settings to take even better pictures or more artistic pictures!

ENTERTAINMENT: Geiger Counter Bingo - Write an app that transmits a message with a random number and letter every time a particle hits the satellite with enough energy. Have a 'bingo from space' game between HAM radio amateurs.

ENTERTAINMENT: Photography Competition - See who among your friends can snap the coolest/most interesting picture from space. The eye of a hurricane, sunrise over the Indian ocean, even aurora from space – see what marvels you can capture!

Onboard Sensors

With the following sensors, students will get to learn a varieties of experiments ranging from collecting data, monitoring weather patterns, to studying radiation to taking pictures. The possibility is endless. Their young minds will create their own innovative experiments.

• Accelerometer
• Gyroscope
• Camera
• Geiger Counter
• Infrared Thermometer
• Light Sensor
• Magnetometer
• Spectrometer
• Sun Sensors (Photodiodes)
• Temperature Sensors

Modular Curriculum

The course can be completed as quickly as two weeks or extended to a full semester based on student capabilities and teacher priorities. Teachers can choose their entry point depends on the class level. Curriculum can be completed from start to finish or can be mixed and matched like lego blocks. Materials are meant to be used by both a student and teacher who don't have any specialized coding or space knowledge. The overall curriculum consists of the following...

1. Introduction to Arduino and Programming
2. Classroom Experiements and Concepts
3. Space Experiments
4. Data Analysis

Introduction to Arduino and Programming

Every team of 4 students will get a ArduSat Edu Kit. Learning the basic of microcontroller is essential to their engineering development. Majority of our consumer products today have a microcontroller inside at one form or another.

Luminosity and temperature sensor in the kit are the exact sensors that are on the satellite. 

The first module provides tutorials on using an Arduino and Arduino coding. These tutorials are very basic and assume that a user is starting from absolute scratch. Additional materials are provided in addition to the video tutorials, such as full code for each project, the circuit diagram, an online quiz, and teacher notes. Expectation is to get students familiar with basic electronics and comfortable looking at and writing simple code. 

Classroom Experiments and Concepts

The curriculum includes a number of concept videos on physics topics in space, such as heat transfer and light, as well as satellite basics. The course provides tutorials for pre-designed experiments using the hardware kit sensors in the classroom. Tutorials come with additional materials such as an online quiz, a worksheet discussing the experiment set-up and variables to consider, and pre-formed spreadsheets/graphs with questions to guide students through data analysis.

Space Experiments

Students can access the online coding platform to design and code their own experiment, and deploy it to the satellite. For less advanced students, pre-built experiments will ask students for simple information about the length and type of data to be collected and will automatically generate the code and deploy it to the satellite. Pre-built experiments can be used in combination with the classroom experiments. For example, students can use the temperature sensor for an experiment in the classroom and get used to collecting data with that sensor, and then use the same sensor in space to collect data in a new environment.Another example of a pre-built experiment is to build a 3D pictures of the Earth's magnetic field, and show that the magnetic field actually looks different than the simplified version in most textbooks. Each pre-built space experiment will have a student worksheet that discusses the variables involved and the overall design of the experiment.

Data Analysis

As part of the student worksheet for the pre-built space experiments, students will have instructions guiding them through how to clean the space data, visualize it in a graph using a spreadsheet, and answer analysis questions. Students will learn how to build their own conclusion and create their next problem solving mission.

About Magnitude.io

Magnitude.io is an agency that introduces select technology companies with STEM curriculum to K-12, Colleges, and Universities.

http://magnitude.io/invitation-space/