USU's Get Away Special Team Preps for 2024 Small Satellite Conference

Utah State University undergraduate researchers are hard at work on a NASA-funded satellite project, and they’re set to report on their progress at the 38th annual Small Satellite Conference Aug. 3-8 on the USU campus in Logan.

“We’re excited to share what we’ve developed so far with industry and academic professionals,” says Ethan Wayland, student coordinator of USU’s renowned Get Away Special (GAS) Team. “The conference is a great opportunity to practice communicating our ideas and to receive constructive feedback from the best of the best.”

Wayland and fellow team member Tyler Day will present a research poster Sunday, Aug. 4, from 10:15 a.m.-4:15 p.m. in the Aggie Recreation Center. Both scholars were awarded USU Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunities (URCO) grants to support their contributions to the team’s GASRATS cube satellite mission. The student-led space research team also hosts an exhibit, Monday, Aug. 5, through Thursday, Aug. 8, in the Taggart Student Center.

The GAS Team learned this past spring their proposal to design and build a CubeSat with an innovative antenna was among just 10 projects selected for NASA’s competitive CubeSat Launch Initiative. The initiative provides the Aggies with the opportunity to launch the USU satellite to the International Space Station, for deployment into Earth’s orbit, in 2026.

“Being able to work on a project that will go into space while still in college is a dream come true,” says Wayland, a computer engineering major. “Knowing that the stuff you’re working on is making a difference is a big deal.”

GASRATS stands for the “Get Away Special Radio and Antenna Transparency Satellite.” The GASRATS mission is focused on creating and demonstratinga pioneering antenna design integrated with a solar panel for low-Earth orbit. The satellite is being developed in collaboration with USU faculty researcher and team mentor Reyhan Baktur, associate professor in USU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The team received an added boost this summer with the award of a $11,000 grant from the California-based Amateur Radio Digital Communications foundation.

“The grant will enable us to upgrade, and add an 8-foot diameter satellite dish, to our rooftop ground station on the Peterson Engineering Laboratory Building,” Wayland says. “This will allow us to track GASRATS and collect data once it’s deployed into space.”

The GASRATS mission follows the GAS Team’s successful GASPACS mission, another NASA-funded project, which the Aggies launched to the ISS via a SpaceX rocket in January 2022. A rousing success, GASPACS completed all mission objectives, including sending images of itself to the GAS Team’s ground station, during 117 days in space.

Founded in 1976 and sponsored by the USU Department of Physics, the GAS Team is largely responsible for USU sending more student-built experiments into space than any other university in the world. From 1982 to 2001, the team sent at least 11 payloads containing more than 30 projects into space aboard NASA’s space shuttles. Since then, the team has conducted several experiments on NASA microgravity “vomit comet” flights and sent experiments aloft using weather balloons, in addition to designing and building satellites.