Inside the Nanosat Lab - Tiny satellites, big ambitions

The Nanosat Lab at the State University of New York at Buffalo is thrumming like a beehive. More than 100 excited, exhausted undergraduates are very hard at work on a volunteer project: building three tiny satellites. The students are nervously anticipating the arrival of their customers—the U.S. Air Force and NASA—whose reviewers will judge their progress and the quality of their work. One of the satellites—the Glint Analyzing Data Observation Satellite, or GLADOS—is about to undergo what’s called a pre-integration review. “It’s kind of our pass/fail,” says junior Maura Sutherland, the lab’s chief of public relations. If the students pass, the satellite will move one step closer to launch. If not, well, pass/fail offers only one other option. More

(Source: Air & Space Magazine - Mar 23)