Wyant College Student, Walter Rahmer, Works on UArizona CatSat Space Mission
Artist's impression of CatSat with its antenna inflated in orbit around Earth. To compensate for any small leaks it may incur from encounters with space debris or micrometeorites, the engineers provided it with enough gas onboard to completely refill the "balloon" 25 times.
Freefall Aerospace
Wyant College Undergraduate, Walter Rahmer, is participating as an undergraduate integration testing engineer with the UArizona CatSat mission. A project with Wyant College and Astronomy Professor Chris Walker and other faculty, the team of students has readied CatSat, a small satellite known as a CubeSat, for launch into space. The satellite is designed to demonstrate new space technology and overcome a major challenge in space exploration: high-speed, low-cost communication across vast distances.
The project is carrying a new communications concept – an inflatable antenna, similar to a beach ball! Using this method the team will collect data on the ionosphere of the Earth and transfer the collected information from space to Earth at high data rates. Additionally, CatSat will fly low and high-resolution cameras for imaging the Earth.
Walter shared his role, saying "getting everything to work together was quite a challenge. I like to say that I just put the screws on it, but there was circuitry and testing work involved as well. Our vibration testing was completed back in November, and since then, I've been working on the flight software and training for the operation of the satellite in flight. A lot of my work now is also focused on the ground station equipment: setting up a UHF station here on campus, getting the X-band antenna at Biosphere 2 operational, and a lot of smaller tasks."
The team anticipates receiving a launch date later this year. The story about the exciting project was featured by the UANews. And the university produced an introductory video about the project with input from a number of the team's participating students, including Walter. Wyant College's "Another Wavelength" recently featured Walter, read it here. In the feature, Walter shared more about the work he's doing with CatSat.