In this project, an interdisciplinary undergraduate student team will design and build a 3U cubesat to demonstrate a novel radiation tolerant computer technology. The computer technology to be…

This is a Cooperative Agreement awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Montana State University (MSU) with a ceiling value of $200,000.00. The contract is to design, build, and operate a 3U CubeSat to demonstrate a novel radiation-tolerant computer technology that has been matured to Technology Readiness Level 6 over the past 8 years through prior NASA-funded projects. The CubeSat mission will be fully planned, designed, and executed by an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate students at MSU, who will learn the formal systems engineering process through a comprehensive training and mentoring plan. The contract also includes two unique outreach activities: the development of learning modules for elementary school students and a mission patch design activity with 2nd graders. This contract does not have a set-aside designation.

In this project, an interdisciplinary undergraduate student team will design and build a 3U cubesat to demonstrate a novel radiation tolerant computer technology. The computer technology to be demonstrated represents an advance to the state of the art in performance, cost, and reliability and directly contributes to objective 1.7 of the NASA strategic plan to mature crosscutting and innovative space technologies. The technical readiness level TRL of this novel computer system has been matured to TRL6 over the past 8 years at montana state university through a series of NASA funded projects. These projects have allowed this technology to be demonstrated in cyclotrons, on high altitude balloons, on sounding rockets, and on an upcoming mission to the international space station. In this project, the technology will achieve its highest level of readiness yet through a stand alone satellite mission that will be fully planned, designed, and executed by an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate students at montana state university. This mission will allow the undergraduate team to learn the formal systems engineering process used in aerospace missions through a comprehensive training and mentoring plan. The student training plan includes both formal classroom work through the 3 semester, engineering design course sequence at MSU in addition to rigorous mentoring from the MSU space science & engineering laboratory staff, which has successfully deployed 5 prior cubesats. This project also contains two unique outreach activities enabled by the interdisciplinary make up of our team. First, the undergraduate student from the department of education will develop a set of learning modules for elementary school students based on this project. The modules WUL cover the characteristics of the space environment gravity, pressure, radiation and be deployed through the montana space grant consortium's space pubuc outreach team to the rest ofthe state. Secondly, the undergraduate student from the school of architecture will create and manage a mission patch design activity in which 2ND graders from morning star elementary school will create the artwork for the mission logo patch. The architecture student will then render the mission patch using a professional drafting tool and have actual patches created that WIU be given to the 2ND graders in addition to being used as advertising for the mission.