Monstrous Explosion Doesn’t Deter Newbie JPL Scientist

 

One of the casualties of the Antares rocket that exploded after launch from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia last Oct. 28 was NASA’s RACE CubeSat made here at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The CubeSat was the product of months of work by a JPL team consisting of new employees, called “early career hires” by NASA. Despite their inexperience, these newbies were entrusted with the job of building the RACE CubeSat.

The team was led by Shannon Statham. Only three years after receiving her graduate degree in engineering, and having logged time in JPL’s Environmental Test Lab, Statham was chosen to become the project manager for NASA’s Radiometer Atmospheric CubeSat Experiment (RACE) mission based in Pasadena.

Statham’s team succeeded and was watching intently as the Antares rocket that was to carry their “baby” into orbit lifted-off, shuddered then exploded into a monstrous ball of smoke and flames.

“The launch failure was a disappointment, but I think all of us know that’s a risk you take,” Statham remembers. “We saw all our hard work effectively go up in flames.”

JPL’s RACE mission is an opportunity for early career hires to develop their technical, leadership and flight project skills through the Phaeton Program.

Statham said the core team for RACE consisted of 15 early career hires who each had their designated role, “but we all wore many hats and contributed to all aspects of taking the mission from proposal, to design, to testing, to launch delivery.

“With a very ambitious project schedule and budget, it’s what we had to do to get the job done”, she said.

They did build the RACE CubeSat, which was a tiny satellite about the size of a loaf of bread. RACE was designed to test components of an Earth-observing radiometer to be used in future space missions by larger, more expensive satellites.

RACE was bound for the International Space Station. It was to have been released from the ISS to orbit Earth, measuring the liquid water path and water vapor pertinent to the water cycle and Earth’s energy budget from 240 miles in space.

The RACE payload is a microwave radiometer (MWR) that primarily observes the 183 GHz water vapor line.

An MWR measures microwaves or energy emitted at sub-millimeter-to-centimeter wavelengths (at frequencies of 1 GHz to 1000 GHz). It’s primarily used on satellites and other spacecraft for meteorological or oceanographic remote-sensing.

RACE was to have assisted in developing and demonstrating critical technologies that will improve NASA’s exploration, science and discovery mission objectives.

The RACE team hoped to show their CubeSat’s performance could rival that of traditional large satellites, resulting in potential cost savings.

And after the Antares failure and the destruction of RACE, what’s next for CubeSats?

Statham is sticking with CubeSats for the time being. She is working on a JPL concept to fly a space-based radar called “RaInCube.” Others on her team have gone on to other CubeSat projects, while still others are working on more traditional space missions or in one of the research labs at JPL.

“I think everyone on the team is taking this as a very positive experience in general, and we’re all moving on to new and exciting endeavors at JPL,” she said of the other team members.

The lessons learned developing the MWR onboard RACE has been applied to a new CubeSat proposal called Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems – Demonstrator or TEMPEST-D.

The next JPL CubeSat is scheduled to orbit on Jan. 29, 2015. It’s called the GEO-CAPE ROIC In-Flight Performance Experiment (GRIFEX). This CubeSat is a flight test of advanced technology required for future Earth observers measuring atmospheric composition from geostationary Earth orbit.

Other JPL CubeSats in development will go to the moon, Mars and near-Earth asteroids. JPL recently selected proposals from 10 universities to analyze CubeSat concepts that could enhance a proposed Europa Clipper mission. The concepts will be incorporated into a JPL study on how small probes could be carried as auxiliary payloads.