FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Amy Hewes
(805) 756-6402
ahewes@calpoly.edu
Cal Poly to Host International CubeSat Developers’ Workshop
SAN LUIS OBISPO -- Students,
professors, industry representatives and
others from as far away as Taiwan and Norway will converge on Cal Poly
Friday and Saturday, April 9-10, for the first-ever CubeSat Developers’
Workshop -- a workshop devoted entirely to the design and development
of
very small satellites also called picosatellites.
Almost 50 students, more than
30 faculty members and representatives
from 27 universities, seven companies and two organizations from around
the world are expected to attend.
It was a joint project --
begun in 1999 -- of Cal Poly and Stanford
University’s Space Systems Development Laboratory that developed
standards for the design of picosatellites. As a result, picosatellites
built by students at universities worldwide are launched using a common
deployer known as a “P-POD,” developed at Cal Poly.
"Today, multidisciplinary
teams of graduate and undergraduate students
at more than 30 colleges and universities are working to design,
construct, test, launch and operate picosatellites,” said Cal Poly
Aerospace Engineering Professor Jordi Puig-Suari, faculty advisor to the
CubeSat Project at Cal Poly. “The CubeSat Developers’ Workshop
will
allow these individuals to network and discuss topics particularly
relevant to cubesats.
“Most satellite conferences
focus on industry professionals and issues
relevant to satellites in general,” Puig-Suari said. “Even
‘small-satellite' conferences focus on satellites that are at least
10
times the size and mass of a cubesat. So we’re very excited about
the
upcoming workshop, which will serve to reduce cost and development time
and increase accessibility to space and the frequency of launches.”
The CubeSat Workshop is being
sponsored by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin,
the California Space Authority and Northrop Grumman. Among the
universities represented will be Cal Poly; Cornell; Hankuk Aviation
University, Korea; Montana State University; National
Cheng Kung University, Taiwan; Nihon University, Japan; the Norwegian
University of Science Technology; Stanford University; Taylor
University, Indiana; the University of Arizona; the University of
Hawaii; the University of Illinois; and the University of Kansas.
The event's keynote speaker will be Professor Robert J. Twiggs,
director of Stanford's Space Systems Development Laboratory, which has
made three successful spacecraft launches of student-built cubesats.
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NOTE TO EDITORS: News coverage of the event is invited. The
workshop opens with a welcome from College of Engineering Dean Peter Lee
at 9 a.m. Friday, April 9, in the Keck Center in Cal Poly's Advanced
Technology Laboratories.