ASU Research E-Magazine: Build It and They Will Learn

Since Oct. 13, 1993, more than 150 ASU students have inscribed their names on the rolls of aerospace history. In the beginning, there were only 10 involved with the design and construction of ASUSat 1. Many have since graduated.

The project is not totally unique. Students at other universities, including Stanford and Colorado, have built satellites before. But at 10 pounds, ASUSat 1 will be the smallest satellite yet to do meaningful science.

It's a tough project with a tight deadline. Program manager Joel Rademacher has welcomed all serious volunteers. Inside the ASUSat 1 laboratory located on the fourth floor of the Engineering Research Center, you will find freshmen working alongside doctoral students, notes Jordi Puig-Suari, an ASU assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

"Our brainstorming sessions are very open and everybody is welcome to say what they are thinking," Puig-Suari says. "Most of our team is formed by undergraduate students and everybody is aware that their work and skills are fundamental to the success of the project."

Many of the students are supported by NASA Space Grant Internships and the National Science Foundation. Others receive class credit through the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering or other departments.

But the talent pool extends beyond ASU's boundaries and further down than the freshman class. In May 1994, several students from Phoenix's Carl Hayden High School joined the team. The Carl Hayden students brought some much-needed amateur radio operations experience to the mix.

Brophy College Prep School student Clint Houston volunteered his services several months earlier. Now a senior at Brophy, Houston works on the structures subsystem.

Even the high-school students must seem old to the fourth- and fifth-graders from Villa Montessori School in Phoenix, who got into the action last semester.

Six Villa Montessori students attended the critical design review on a rainy morning last March. They already had taken a field trip to the ASUSat 1 laboratory and wanted to see more. They visited the laboratory every Monday afternoon for about half the semester.

During their visits, the students built paper rockets from educational materials supplied by NASA, completed science workbook activities, and observed ASUSat 1's design and construction.

"They're very excited about what they're seeing," says Mary Valleloungh. Her son David was among the Villa Montessori students to visit ASU. David's brother, Robert, is a senior at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott.

"The two of them are so close, anything that Bobby would aspire to is something that David just can't get enough of," Valleloungh adds.

Former structures team leader Chris Michaelis probably straddles the world of college life and that of the younger students as well as anyone. Michaelis celebrated his 18th birthday in May, just four days before completing his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering.

Along with the degree, he took home honors as the Outstanding Graduate in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. After ruling out graduate school at Caltech, MIT and ASU, Michaelis began studies at Stanford in September. He also spent most of the summer conducting research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"I'm trying to pick off the good points of being a teenager and the good points of being a university student," said Michaelis, before he left for Maryland. "It's an interesting challenge. I'm having fun."

Working on ASUSat 1 is both work and fun for most of the students. But the project's history-making aspect is something the team members rarely think about, according to Michaelis.

"In order to get this thing working, we need to think more on the day-by-day level than on what's going to happen after it launches. We're on a tight timeline right now to get things done," he said.

"After it launches, successfully or unsuccessfully, I think it'll sink in that we really built a satellite, that it was all done by the students, and that this is something that's never happened before."—Steve Koppes