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(From left) Dr. Brian Thomas, Dr. Rashidi and Julien Brousseau overlook and discuss the mechanical tray which will be installed in the satellite at the NASA Glen Research Center.

Fenn College goes beyond with NASA

By Francis Petruziello

The Fenn College of Engineering’s Center for Research in Electronics and Aerospace Technology (CREATE) and the NASA Glenn Research Center will be working with students on building a satellite.

The U.S. Department of Defense will work with students involved in Fenn College’s Center for Research in Electronics and Aerospace Technology to design and build radar technology.

Undergraduate and graduate students in the mechanical, industrial and electronic engineering programs at Fenn College were involved in building a satellite named VikSat 1, which was started in 2003 through the Nanosect Project, according to Scott Darpel, project manager. Darpel said this project has also taught the students about the aerospace industry.

“We at Cleveland State University and NASA Glenn Research Center are working on making space into an Industry. One major way to do that is to make satellites smaller, smarter, cheaper, and make them here in Ohio,” according to the college’s Web site.

The VikeSat platform will supply communication, research, and military applications at a fraction of the cost of a typical satellite today. One of the major needs of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security is space-based radar which are installations, big radar dishes into rays which will essentially cover the planet, Darpel explained.

Darpel used Sept. 11, 2001 when one of the hijacked airplanes flew over Cleveland as an example of how this technology would benefit. “While I was over at Cleveland (Hopkins Airport) they could track it (the airplane), they didn’t know what was going on yet, but they could see the plane move or turning around but after it left that bubble that surrounds us; that radar coverage because the people who took control of that plane turned off that transmitter, that’s a simple thing to do; turn off that switch and you could no longer be tracked,” Darpel said.

“We’ve gone and made four trips to the Department of Defense; Dr. Nayfeh has a green light to propose a program and we’re going to do is build an on-orbit factory that will produce other satellites,” Darpel said. Taysir Nayfeh, associate professor of industrial engineering, pioneered and created such in-space manufacturing and is also the leading faculty member for the satellite project.

“The proposed technology can be used to manufacture many things, among which are radar and power arrays,” Nayfeh said. Darpel said the satellite and radar technologies developed are more than 100 meters and can point to five different points on Earth in less than a minute. “We understand manufacturing processes really well now because of going through this student project in the last year creating VikSat,” Darnell said.

“We’ve already begun to understand what it takes; it’s dual, we know that with Cleveland State,” he continued. “With some help, we have Northrop-Drummond’s going to be working with us, 3M is going to be providing material for us and Rockwell Automation is going to provide us with control help of a space-based factory to resupply cargo,” Darpel said.

Darpel said the students benefit by using the techniques they’ve learned at this project in their classes and in their professional lives. “My students have been applying our unique, control techniques to the satellite,” said Zhiqiang Gao, associate professor and director of The Center for Advanced Control Technologies and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Darpel said Cleveland State will benefit from the success of these programs and others such ventures by giving the university a reputation for its research and technology.

Fenn College has been involved with Advanced Power Management and Distribution Systems for spacecrafts since 1999, according to Gao. The VikSat 1 project will be completed by January, 2006.

First-phase for the radar technology project will also begin in 2006.

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