Sonoma State University students part of project that will launch satellite into orbit

By John Ramos

On Thursday, a rocket was scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying a special payload with a North Bay connection. The lift-off didn’t go as planned, but students at Sonoma State University are still excited by the chance to put their learning into practice and into orbit.

The university has been part of a project called “3UCubed,” helping to create a small satellite, about the size of a loaf of bread, that will soon be launched into orbit.

“It separates from the rocket, and then it starts to fall towards Earth,” said Dr. Laura Peticolas. “But it’s falling so fast that it keeps going around Earth and comes back around.” 

That’s the way all satellites work, and they can stay up there for years, even decades, before coming back down. But Dr. Peticolas, 3UCubed’s principal investigator at SSU, said we are currently in a season called “Solar Max” where huge storms on the surface of the sun are throwing particles at the Earth, having a negative effect on orbiting vehicles.

“So, what was happening is that satellites were flying through that, and then they were suddenly de-orbiting way faster than anyone expected,” said Dr. Peticolas. “So, we want to understand what’s making that happen. And when does it happen and how does it happen?”

That’s what the 3UCubed satellite will be studying, and it will be monitored from the roof of one of the school’s buildings. A receiver will gather data for about five to 10 minutes every 12 hours as the satellite passes overhead. They’re particularly interested in a focused area called “The Cusp,” sitting high up on the Earth, where the particles seem to be more concentrated. Dr. Peticolas is particularly excited by the project because things like this are usually reserved for larger research institutions like UC Berkeley.  

Sonoma State is considered a “teaching university,” but she thinks there is an important benefit to including them.

“Doing research with students is a way to train the next generation of teachers and professors,” she said. “And so, teaching universities need these kind of real-life experiences so that our students can go out and speak about what it is to be engineers and be scientists and be computer scientists in the real world.”

And her excitement seems to be contagious.

“I was pretty hesitant about diving deep into physics,” said second-year student Jack Engblom. “But after I took the first semester, I started to fall in love with it.”

“It’s a small school, so it’s kind of hard to not be passionate about such a small program,” said Nick Froehlich, who wants to study astrophysics. “So, everyone here knows what they’re doing, they know what they want to teach and it’s very specialized. So, I do enjoy my time here.”

Physica is one of the majors that was eliminated along with team sports in last year’s budget cuts. The hope is that the 3UCubed project, and the passion of teachers like Dr. Peticolas, will convince the powers that be to reinstate the physics major at SSU.

Because of cloudy weather over Vandenberg AFB, Thursday morning’s launch was postponed. The next possible window will be Nov. 26, the day before Thanksgiving.