Murphy Stratton, a laboratory manager for the CubeSat program within the University of Illinois’ Department of Aerospace Engineering, spent the summer as a Faculty Fellow at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Stratton helped get the Reliable Expandable Satellite Testbed (REST), which is designed to test CubeSats before launch, up and running.
Written by Mike Koon
Murphy Stratton's work with the REST program will have positive effects on the University of Illinois' CubeSat program.Murphy Stratton, a laboratory manager for the CubeSat program within the University of Illinois’ Department of Aerospace Engineering, spent the summer as a Faculty Fellow at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Stratton helped get the Reliable Expandable Satellite Testbed (REST), which is designed to test CubeSats before launch, up and running.
NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative was designed to provide universities, high schools, and other nonprofits the opportunity to conduct scientific experiments and test technology in space. The cubes, roughly 10x10x11.35 centimeters in size, are launched as secondary payloads on launch vehicles and put into orbit. While these projects give students valuable engineering experience from starting a mission life cycle to getting data from them, they still have an approximate 60 percent failure rate.
REST was developed by The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) as an early risk mitigation for CubeSats with the goal of decreasing its failure rates.
“Simulated orbital operational models created to test the hardware and software of these CubeSats provides a rigorous testing platform,” Stratton noted. “Increasing the availability and standard of functional systems level testing and integration would substantially decrease the mission failure rates among CubeSats.”
Stratton, a systems engineer, was assigned to help set up and use REST to support current projects such as the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and future CubeSat missions. Stratton’s expertise in Core Flight System (cFS), developed by NASA as a way to create better and reusable flight software, was a big reason the 2016 Morehead State University graduate was among the 13 chosen, and one of the youngest, nationwide to participate in the Faculty Fellows program. She used cFS to help interface with hardware components.
“We were able to get a piece of hardware called a Star Tracker talking with the system and get data back, which was the big goal of the summer,” Stratton said.
NASA would like to more fully partner with universities on future projects and the Faculty Fellows program is just the start. Stratton indicates NASA is interested in developing a CAN (Cooperative Agreement Notice) with the University of Illinois and for Illinois students to use the REST system once it is fully functional to test CubeSats. Stratton, along with Michael Lembeck, the Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois (LASSI), would help set up those agreements from the university side.
“This would be an amazing development for us,” Stratton said. “Universities would greatly benefit from using the REST system because they would have a way to test their flight software and hardware early in the mission development cycle while also utilizing the NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center expertise. NASA has also indicated they are interested in expanding their college intern program, which would be another tremendous opportunity for our students.”
In addition to her work with REST, Stratton’s time at NASA coincided with the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin was in attendance at the Apollo 11 anniversary celebration.
“The whole summer was tremendous,” Stratton said. “On the practical side, I was able to learn how to get the software set up and use it in the system. On the cool side, I was able to hear people casually talking about trying to land on the moon again and get the Mars Lander up and running.”
With Stratton’s help, the REST system is closer to fruition. She indicates that once the team is able to get the code to run inside of the current framework, more simulated models could be replaced by actual hardware.
“The long-term effects would be outstanding, causing more CubeSat projects to be successful,” Stratton said. “This would enhance the scientific value of these projects and be a great learning tool for young engineers. In addition, NASA would benefit by gaining experience in testing the system with different types of simulated and real hardware.”