SE Valley Times

Five years ago, a student at Arizona State University proposed the creation of a special satellite within the newly established Interplanetary Laboratory. The goal was to design a device that would enable communication with space.

“At first we thought it could never be done,” said Eric Stribling, interim lab director and assistant teaching professor of the Interplanetary Initiative. He was one of several speakers at the lab’s fifth-anniversary celebration held in Sun Devil Hall on ASU's Tempe campus.

After three years of development, students at the lab successfully constructed LightCube, a small satellite launched by NASA. It can be deployed to low-Earth orbit and activated with a ham radio to emit a flash visible from Earth. “It was a tremendous success with the community of ham operators around the world,” Stribling noted. Feedback came from as far away as Brazil and Poland.

The anniversary event also celebrated two other student-powered, NASA-supported missions launched by the lab over five years: Phoenix, an infrared camera for observing urban heat islands, and DORA, which uses lasers for inter-spacecraft communication.

Students and faculty from various schools attended the event alongside business partners. Among those present was Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of ASU's Psyche mission and founding chair of the Interplanetary Initiative. Daniel “Danny” Jacobs, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration who designed and directed the 6,800-square-foot space lab, described it as an “experimental lab.” More than 300 students use this interdisciplinary resource each semester.

Guests toured facilities including an electronics lab for production and testing, mechanical fabrication areas, a vacuum chamber, vibration table, and over 30 3D printers. Jacobs emphasized that training students is paramount: “We have students that are learning how to build satellites...and then when other people are on campus...we have trained students that can help them.”

Chandler Hutchens shared his experience as a former student now working at Northrop Grumman: “I learned things in the lab that I couldn’t possibly learn in the classroom.” Bella McAuliffe also spoke about her diverse experiences as a second-year aerospace engineering student working at the lab.

Looking ahead, upcoming projects include Coconut—a custom satellite for data relay—and SPARCS—a small telescope monitoring low-mass stars' activity. Jacobs envisions more training flights and partnerships: “And who knows, maybe in the next five years we will be able to land a satellite on the moon.”