Updated at 12:02 p.m., Wednesday, May 30, 2007
UH launches new space program
Advertiser Staff
The University of Hawai'i has established the Hawai'i Space Flight Laboratory and is now the first university in the world capable of designing, building, launching and controlling its own satellites. The school's goal is to launch its first space mission by the fall of 2009, a UH news release said."Hawai'i is located in a unique position to become a low-cost gateway to space, and to place UH as the only university in the world to have both satellite fabrication capabilities and unique, direct access to orbital space. This will enable many experiments that study the Earth's oceans and continents, as well as test numerous engineering experiments in the hostile environment of space," Peter Mouginis-Mark, Interim Director of the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, stated in the news release.
The pioneering program combines researchers from the College of Engineering and the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology. It was launched with the help of a $4 million appropriation authored by U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye for the LEONIDAS (Low Earth Orbit Nanosat Integrated Defense Autonomous System) program. The federal funds, estimated to eventually grow to approximately $40 million, will cover two launches and two spacecraft, the UH news release said.
UH participants will design, build, launch and operate 40-kilogram small satellites that can be configured for a variety of science and educational tasks, the news release said. Several new faculty are also being hired to support this initiative, including Dr. Trevor Sorensen, who was mission manager for the Clementine mission to the Moon in the early 1990s. Dr. Sorensen joins the College of Engineering in July.
