Utah 'Space' University: GAS Team's Satellite Successfully Deployed from ISS

Update: As of Jan. 26, 2022, USU's Get Away Special Team confirmed the successful deployment of the "aeroboom," a novel, expanding navigational boom, from the team's GASPACS CubeSat currently in space.

Utah State University’s Get Away Special Team CubeSat successfully deployed Jan. 26 from the International Space Station. It’s alive, well and communicating with Earth.

Members of the student space research team burst into cheers, jumped up and down and high-fived each other, as they watched the satellite they’d built themselves speed out from the station this morning into low earth orbit.

“There it goes!” yelled team members as the CubeSat appeared for a few seconds on a live video feed transmitted directly from the ISS.

Moments before, the scholars waited with intense concentration as they viewed U.S. astronauts Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn preparing to release the 4-inch-cube satellite. Named GASPACS (Get Away Special Passive Attitude Control Satellite), the CubeSat is Utah’s first solely undergraduate-built satellite successfully launched to space and one of the first in the nation.

Launching the satellite was one hurdle; the next immediate concern: Would the tiny box work as planned?

“We knew it would be about 40 minutes before antenna deployed and began operating,” says Jack Danos, student coordinator of the team. “So much could go wrong. Would the satellite open to allow the antenna to move into position? Would the batteries work?”

Within an hour, the Aggies had their answer. Amateur radio operators from Asia and South America reported contact with GASPACS, as it sailed along its planned trajectory. Shortly thereafter, a radio operator from Argentina shared a recording the team had been waiting for: The satellite broadcast the first bars of “The Scotsman,” USU’s iconic spirit song — proof the CubeSat’s antenna deployed and was functioning properly.

Team members gave each other an ecstatic group hug.

But the real test? Had GASPACS' novel inflatable boom deployed? Would the team witness the innovative, unique feature designed to keep the CubeSat on track and lay the groundwork for allowing future projects modeled on the tightly packed bundle to successfully unfold into larger structures in space?

That test will have to wait a little longer, as GAS Team members attempt to communicate with GASPACS as its path takes it over Logan. During the initial pass later on Jan. 26, the CubeSat appeared to transmit an image, but the team was not quite able to capture it. The students don’t yet know if the boom has deployed. Yet the little-satellite-that-could is still functioning, still flying and expected to make additional passes over the USU campus.

“I can’t describe how this feels,” Danos says. “As many as 50 percent of launched CubeSats are never heard from again. To get this far is amazing.”

“What these students have achieved is phenomenal,” says Jan Sojka, faculty advisor to the team and head of USU’s Department of Physics. “Most of the team started on the project as freshmen, with very little experience. They’ve had to learn how to design, build and communicate with a satellite from scratch.”

Sojka, who has been with the GAS Team since its inception in 1978 with NASA’s shuttle program, says today’s achievements are what the team’s late founders and visionaries Gilbert “Gil” Moore and Rex McGill envisioned, when they seized the opportunity to create the program for students.

“USU’s GAS Team is unique in that the students drive the entire effort,” he says. “They fail and fail and fail again, but they persevere and accomplish what no one thought they could.”