Program within the United States Air Force Academy for building small satellites
FalconSAT-1
FalconSAT is the United States Air Force Academy's (USAFA) small satellite engineering program. Satellites are designed, built, tested, and operated by Academy cadets. The project is administered by the USAFA Space Systems Research Center under the direction of the Department of Astronautics. Most of the cadets who work on the project are pursuing a bachelor of science degree in astronautical engineering, although students from other disciplines (typically electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or computer science) join the project.
Compared to most commercial satellite projects, FalconSAT is considerably lower budget, and follows a very accelerated development cycle. Because of the near total personnel turnover every year (the program is generally a senior cadet project, and graduating cadets must be replaced yearly) it forces the cadet engineers to very quickly learn and become familiar with the satellite systems to which they are assigned.
FalconSAT used to have a sister project, FalconLaunch, to design and develop sounding rocket class vehicles.
first stage, Falcon 1 launched Saturday, 25 March 2006 at 09:30 local time. The DARPA payload was the United States Air Force Academy's FalconSAT–2, which...
orbital deployment on 22 February 2018. The satellites were launched by a Falcon 9 rocket, and they were piggy-pack payloads launching with the Paz satellite...
space probes to the moon Comparable rockets: Angara Ariane 5 Delta IV Falcon 9 Falcon Heavy GSLV Mk III H-IIA H-IIB Long March 5 Proton Vulcan Centaur Zenit...
Astronautics in 1958 and the Cadet Space Operations Squadron, which operates the FalconSAT satellites, in 1997. Additional space programs, such as the Azimuth program...
2007-07-03. "SpaceQuest to Develop Bus for US Air Force Academy's Falconsat-3 and FalconSat-5 Missions" (PDF) (Press release). SpaceQuest.com. 2003-08-15...
additional payloads, by deploying FASTSAT, FASTRAC, RAX, O/OREOS and FalconSat-5. A Hydrazine Auxiliary Propulsion System upper stage was flown aboard...
cigarettes.: 71–77 Originally, TacSat-1 was going to be the payload for the maiden Falcon 1 launch, but eventually the FalconSAT-2 satellite from the United...
additional two SkySat satellites and three Dove CubeSats were launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg on 3 December 2018. The SkySat satellites are...
spacecraft tracks). Spaceflight portal List of NRO launches "SeeSat-L - Milstar 5 on OIG". SeeSat-L. 16 January 2002. Retrieved 1 October 2012. "Stacksat (POGS...
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