OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD TECH
Sask. students join space race
A small satellite completely designed, built and operated by students at the University of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Polytechnic will head into space in 2021, thanks to a $200,000 grant from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
This will be the first studentbuilt satellite from Saskatchewan to make it into space — an opportunity U of S physics student Simone Hagey said she was lucky enough to have “fall into her lap” — albeit with a lot of hard work.
“You don’t usually get a chance to actually participate in the building of something that will be in space in your undergrad,” she said. “We’ve worked on projects before, but none have gone to space — so that’s really the pinnacle of a space engineering student’s dream.”
Alongside her colleagues Liam Gray and Connor Schentag and overseen by associate engineering professor Sean Maw, Hagey will spend the next three years designing and manufacturing the satellite with help from students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic.
“The collaboration with Sask. Polytechnic will probably take a little bit longer to get going because they are going to be helping us with the manufacturing and prototyping,” Hagey said.
“So, we have to get through the design phase first, where we figure out what materials we’re testing, how it’s going to be implemented into the satellite and that kind of thing. But once we start manufacturing they are going to help us so much because they have facilities that we do not have access to here.”
The satellite — called a CubeSat due to its small size and shape, which is similar to two Rubik’s Cubes attached together — will be responsible for studying how certain materials are affected when they come into contact with extreme temperatures, radiation and space debris in low Earth orbit.
The group’s next challenge is to raise enough money to match the funds from the CSA, so the university has set up a website at give.usask.ca/usst so anyone who wants to support the project can donate securely.
The CubeSat isn’t the only space technology making waves at the university. A Mars rover prototype dubbed the “Saskorpian” is headed to two international competitions this year — and has been ranked in the top five of 98 entries in the highly competitive University Rover Challenge taking place in Utah.
U of S Space Design team president Danno Peters, alongside more than 30 undergraduate students, have been perfecting the Saskorpian over the last four years. The new prototype is the largest — and lightest — model to date.
“The best part is it’s all student designed and built,” Peters said.
“It’s giving us experience that we cannot achieve in class ... the biggest thing we can hear back from the industry is that our engineers can build things that can actually be built. We’ve heard many stories of incredible designs on the computer that are impossible to manufacture — and we run into it quite often too — and it’s (thanks to) that in-person learning ... that you can’t get in a classroom.”