New Mexico Tech Student Satellite (NMTSat)

Anders Jorgensen ¹ J. Harris ¹ A. Zucherman ¹ S. Gill ¹ A. Mayorga- Del Valle ¹ W. Myers ¹ S. Fennell ¹ A. Nguyen ¹ O. Schmelzel ¹ M. Landavazo ¹ J. A. Klepper ¹ D. S. Guillette ¹ H. B. Vo ² D. Palmer ³ R. M. Holmes ³ E. Stromberg ⁴ A. Reynolds ⁴

¹USA, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech)
²Vietnam, Vietnamese-German University, Ho Chi Minh City
³Nm, USA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos,
⁴Co, USA, Astra, Llc, Louisville

NMTSat was conceived as a student satellite experiment on a minimal
budget. NMTSat was funded a combined $50K from the New Mexico Tech
administration and from the New Mexico NASA/EPSCoR program. That
budget had to cover off-the-shelf components, in-house instruments,
meetings, supplies, testing, and travel. Over several years and by a
large number of volunteer students, primarily undergraduates, NMTSat
was designed, built, tested, and delivered for launch. NMTSat is a 3U
cubesat with five instruments, a plasma probe, two magnetometers, a
optical beacon instrument, and a GPS occultation experiment. The last
two instruments were supplied by outside collaborators (Los Alamos
National Laboratory and ASTRA). We will provide an overview of the
NMTSat project and discuss the challenge and lessons learned from
managing such a project on a small budget with an all-volunteer
undergraduate workforce.

Anders Jorgensen