Date: April 2024
Amount: $11,529

The Utah State University (USU) Get Away Special Student Satellite Team (GAS Team), established in 1976, is a CubeSat team run by students and is comprised predominantly of undergrads. Their aim is to provide its members real-life experiences with both radio communication technology and amateur satellite operation. The GAS Team is currently developing its next CubeSat, the Get Away Special Radio and Antenna Transparency Satellite (GASRATS), where its purpose is to demonstrate the use of a novel transparent patch antenna (TPA), with its launch planned for early 2026. The TPA in development for the GASRATS mission is built for S-band communications; however, the GAS Team’s current ground station is set up to only perform UHF communications.

This grant will provide funding for the USU GAS Team to equip their ground station to perform S-band communications, thus significantly improving their ability to effectively communicate with the TPA affixed to the GASRATS CubeSat. The grant will also fund the creation of a portable ground station for outreach demonstrations. As a result of this funding, not only will they significantly improve their network capabilities and increase their probability of S-band communications, the team’s knowledge and skill set of antenna theory and design will be improved, and they will also be able to effectively inform their community of radio communications by demonstrating real-life use cases.

Learn more at https://www.usu.edu/physics/gas/.