The University of Nebraska-Lincoln High Altitude eXperimental Payloads (AXP) student team specializes in conducting important science in space and the upper atmosphere. The team takes on a new project every year, building on the accumulated knowledge and experience. Our team has made significant contributions to the scientific community in Nebraska as well as national scale. Past projects include Big Red Satellite; the first cube satellite developed in Nebraska and launched into space. This project was done in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The purpose of the mission was to test the efficiency and lifetime of perovskite solar panels in space for aerospace applications. As a successor to this mission, our team created a scientific high altitude balloon payload through NASA’s High Altitude Student Platform continuing research on the longevity of perovskite solar cells.
UNL-AXP’s recent research has been in the study of broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS) and measuring the degradation of electrical components in space. The experiment uses broadband dielectric spectroscopy to non-destructively track molecular-scale degradation and shielding properties of FEP-coating stacks in real time. The team hopes to observe how atomic oxygen interacts with fluoropolymer films containing organic coating in low Earth orbit. Atomic oxygen is rare and expensive to produce in large quantities down on earth, but prevalent in low Earth orbit. The scientific payload the team has been building will be flown 170km into space onboard a Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket with NASA’s RockSat program. At the start of the experiment window, the rocket’s skirt will be ejected providing the payloads with exposure to space. During this time, the team’s experiment payload will be in contact with expected levels of atomic oxygen and will use BDS to measure the interactions in real time. UNL-AXP intends to build on the merits of this research and apply it to providing electrochemical shielding for microcircuitry in space, with the hopes of enabling the integration of AI technology for orbital hardware.
Our payload, nicknamed BRS1.5, carried a newer generation of the perovskite solar cells tested by BRS1, as well as the same (and this time functional) sun vector sensor.
HASP Test Launch Report
HASP Downlink Website
Project Repository
Nebraska NEBP Eclipse Experience Paper by Kendra Sibbernsen detailing the program and our high altitude balloon launches out of Roswell, NM and Carbondale, IL
The goal of this scientific mission is to characterize the performance and degradation of experimental perovskite solar cells from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory while in low earth orbit. To accomplish this, a custom precision curve tracer was designed along with a low-Ohm analog multiplexer that was integrated with Near Space Launch's 1U FastBus CubeSat Platform, which incorporates an electrical power system and Iridium satellite communication system for telemetry.
Big Red Sat-1 was integrated into the Nanoracks CubeSat Deployer 27 (NRCSD27) on 12 December 2023 and launched on 21 March 2024 on the SpaceX CRS-30 mission. Big Red Sat-1 was deployed from NRCSD27 by Voyager Space on 18 April 2024 at 18:05:09 UTC (Deployment Clip). The satellite made first communication with the operations team at 03:00:10 UTC on 19 April 2024.
The satellite deorbited sometime after 23:41:51 UTC on 1 August 2024 after 105 days of operation.
Quoted from Big-Red-Sat README.md
