On the team’s first submission to the competitive CSLI, the tweeting satellite was selected as one of 14 small research satellites from nine states that will launch between 2022 and 2025. According to NASA, projects were proposed by educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and NASA centers. Each team must fund and build its own satellite as well as run its mission. NASA coordinates the trip to space on a supply mission and launches the satellites from the International Space Station. Once its CubeSat is in orbit, the SilverSat team will contact it from a ground station and connect it to the internet. The CubeSat will log into its own account on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) and post pictures from space.
“It’s amazing to see what they can accomplish,” Copeland said. “I was extremely impressed and even surprised when we got selected on our first shot.”
The participants have had to learn everything it takes to create an engineering program from the bottom up, developing skills in mechanical engineering, electronics, computer programming and math. Like work on the satellite itself, the proposal for the CSLI was written by the students with help from their mentors. Any mentor contributions were annotated so NASA evaluators could see that the students did the majority of the work. The space agency was so impressed with the students that it invited them to present to the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters this past spring.
“These kids are incredibly smart,” said Cori Battista, a program manager in APL’s Space Exploration Sector. “They are asking questions and building [circuit] boards and testing them; things that, when I was their age, weren’t even in my wildest dreams.”
Battista, who serves as the deputy program manager for NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission, joined the project as a volunteer mentor in 2019 and teaches the students project management and risk management to keep the SilverSat delivery on track.
“They give me hope,” Battista said. “It’s just wonderful to see the students work together, to see how their minds work, and to see them lean in on very technical work. This is not easy stuff we’re doing. We’re building a CubeSat to go out into the harshest environment there is, to circle the Earth and to tweet pictures. They’re designing this. They’re doing it. The intelligence, the communication skills, the creativity, the ability to lean in, just the curiosity in the questions they ask; it all gives me hope for our future.”