Ithaca (WSYR-TV) – On its final journey into space, Space Shuttle Endeavor took with it a little piece of Ithaca. Three special, and very small satellites made at Cornell University were taken into orbit Monday morning.
Cornell Professor Mason Peck had special contacts at NASA and was able to get his students a free ride.
"Someone had an experimental pallet going up and had extra room," said Zac Manchester, a Ph.D. student at Cornell. "They asked if we had anything that could fit in a small space."
Fortunately, they did. Manchester has been working on the satellites for more than three years. The ones accompanying the astronauts on Endeavor are about the size of a cracker.
"Basically, you can think of this as Sputnik on a chip," said Manchester. "It basically just flies overhead and sends out a little beacon signal that we can track."
The satellites will eventually dock with the International Space Station.
Manchester said the purpose of sending the satellites is to demonstrate that something so small can survive outside Earth’s atmosphere and transmit data to the ground.
"The goal is to actually have sensors on all these little guys so they can actually collect scientific data and atmospheric data," Manchester said.
This technology can be used to studying weather patterns and changes in the Earth's atmosphere, said Manchester.
"Their 'ballistic coefficient' is much smaller than for a large satellite," Manchester said. "They will actually slow down much faster than a large satellite and won't burn up in Earth's atmosphere."
This way, the satellites can continuously measure and collect data.
"Rather than have a big space craft with radar to study the atmosphere, you could take tens- or even hundreds-of-thousands of these satellites, each with a sensor on it and let them flutter through the atmosphere," Manchester said.
Manchester and the team working on the satellites will monitor the ones traveling with Endeavor from a ground radio station at Mount Pleasant. The satellites will use solar power to generate a radio signal which will be picked up by the transmitter at the ground station.
