Missouri S&T’s student-designed satellite ready for launch

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On February 22, 2024

Emily Doddemeade, left, is the Multi-Mode Mission’s project manager, and Drake Beaman is the chief engineer. They are pictured here working in an S&T clean room. Photo by Michael Pierce/Missouri S&T.

Emily Doddemeade, left, is the Multi-Mode Mission’s project manager, and Drake Beaman is the chief engineer. They are pictured here working in an S&T clean room. Photo by Michael Pierce/Missouri S&T.

A satellite developed by Missouri S&T’s student-run Satellite Research Team will soon be launched into space on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket during the upcoming Transporter-10 mission. 

Emily Doddemeade, a senior in aerospace engineering from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, says the team has been informed that launch is targeted for “no earlier than March 2024.”  

The S&T team refers to this satellite initiative, which is part of NASA’s Undergraduate Student Instrument Project, as the Multi-Mode Mission, or M³. Doddemeade is the project manager. 

Drake Beaman, a junior in aerospace engineering from Pleasant Hill, Missouri, who is the project’s chief engineer, says once the small, cube-shaped satellite is in space, it will test an experimental thruster that was developed in the Missouri S&T Advanced Plasma Lab in partnership with Froberg Aerospace. 

The propulsion system will include both chemical and electric components and also be fed a liquid propellent, he says. The thruster will be fired multiple times in space for 30-second bursts. 

S&T students first began working on this NASA-funded project in 2016, Beaman says, and several S&T students and alumni have played instrumental roles in the project. 

Doddemeade says the satellite was delivered from S&T to the Firefly Aerospace facility in Austin, Texas, in mid-January, and she, along with Beaman, Rayan Barghchoun, a December aerospace engineering graduate from St. Charles, Missouri, who specialized in programming for the team, and Dr. Hank Pernicka, Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor of aerospace engineering and the team’s advisor, loaded the satellite into a deployer.  

From there, the satellite then took a trip inside the deployer to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where it was integrated into the Falcon 9 rocket by SEOPS, LLC and will eventually be sent off into space.  

Missouri S&T’s Facebook and Twitter channels will include updates once the launch date and time is confirmed, and SpaceX’s live mission webcast will be available at spacex.com and x.com/spacex

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu. 

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