NNU partners with NASA, American Semiconductor in space sensor research

Nampa, Idaho

Northwest Nazarene University's RockSat-X engineering team, in collaboration with NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and Boise-based American Semiconductor, Inc. (ASI), will launch an experimental payload on a sub-orbital sounding rocket to 100 miles above the Atlantic Ocean on a half-hour flight Friday. The payload will parachute down into the Atlantic, where it will be recovered by ship and returned to the NNU research lab for post-flight data analysis by the team and their collaborators. The team is sponsored by ASI, JPL, and the NASA Idaho Space Grant Consortium.

The team's goals are to investigate new flexible electronics technologies from ASI and JPL, applied to the study of upper atmospheric weather, such as the jet stream over the Atlantic. Light-weight, helicopter-like 3-D printed aeroshells designed at NNU will be deployed from the rocket at the upper edges of the atmosphere and spin or flutter down slowly, all the while radio transmitting their sensor data back to the rocket and the ground (similar to an upside-down version of the sensors that were released upward into a tornado vortex in the movie Twister).

Meanwhile, a prototype of the STANLE printed electronic sensor sheets called "atmospheric confetti" designed at JPL and Xerox PARC will be operated on board the rocket platform. This confetti sensor concept may be used on future Mars orbiters to distribute sensors throughout the Martian upper atmosphere to gather scientific data or prior to a manned landing to thoroughly understand atmospheric conditions thus permitting a safe landing. These confetti sensors would slowly flutter down to the surface of Mars delivering weather/wind data back to an array of overhead orbiters. With such small mass and high surface area, these confetti sensors do not require expensive or complicated entry, descent, and landing equipment.

NNU students have created tiny 3-D-printed aeroshells, on whose curved surfaces sensors, controllers, radios, and antennas are either directly printed or stuck on like a stamp. Various aeroshell shapes will be dispensed into space in a carousel-like mechanism called "The Revolver." Video of each aeroshell's flight will be taken and compared, to determine the optimum shape. Tiny flexible plastic "stamps" with American Semiconductor's new FleXTM Silicon-on-Polymer flexible integrated circuits and heartbeat LEDs are attached to the curved wings of the aeroshells, allowing the first in-space flight test of this new technology. Other aeroshells contain temperature sensors and tiny ZigBee wireless network devices that communicate their data back to a receiver on the rocket. Some of this data is then sent via NASA radio signals to the ground, while the JPL STANLE data and the NNU video data are stored in onboard data recorders in watertight boxes to be studied after the experiment is recovered from the Atlantic and brought back home to Nampa.

ASI, the industry leader in flexible integrated circuits and flexible hybrid systems development as well as services provider to create flexible integrated circuits, recently released the FleXform-ADC™ Flexible Hybrid Development Kit, providing everyone access to the same technology used by NNU on the RockSat-X. Users can fabricate sensors directly on the FleXform-ADC flexible circuit board or attach pre-fabricated sensors for a system-level demonstration. For more information about ASI, which supports all aspects of flexible design and processing, visit americansemi.com.

American Semiconductor is a registered trademark of American Semiconductor, Inc. FleXform, FleXform-ADC, FleX, Silicon-on-Polymer, FleX-ADC, FleX-MCU and FleX-IC are trademarks of American Semiconductor, Inc.
--Northwest Nazarene University

 

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