LEO, the latest Cal Poly CubeSAT, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Monday night from NASA’s historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The megarocket — the most powerful launch vehicle currently in operation — also will be carrying 23 different satellites for the Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 mission. Cal Poly students and aerospace engineers have worked on about a dozen of these small satellites, helping install them in the spring-loaded boxes that will nudge them into space.
These include a softball-size satellite, built by Florida high school students, that will communicate through Wi-Fi to LEO, as well as The Planetary Society’s much-anticipated LightSail 2. Cal Poly students have been instrumental in testing the citizen-funded project that Bill Nye (the Science Guy) has called a potential game changer for low-cost interplanetary space travel. And the students will perform critical ground station operations for the spacecraft that is about the size of a loaf of bread, working with Nye’s TPS team to unfurl the Mylar sail (the size of a boxing ring) about two weeks after launch to ultimately test the feasibility of using a sail to harness photons from the sun to propel the spacecraft. (Cal Poly and The Planetary Society have worked together on the LightSail project and its two spacecraft since 2010.)
