For the first time ever, a satellite designed and fabricated by University of Hawaii students was launched into orbit Tuesday.
The cube satellite, or CubeSat, hitched a ride aboard a Minotaur 1 rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as part of a record-breaking launch of 29 different satellites — the most at one time.
The satellite’s expected yearlong mission is to calibrate U.S. Department of Defense radar stations all over the world to track various objects in space, project manager Larry Martin said in a phone interview Tuesday while he traveled by bus to the launch site.
Martin, a UH-Manoa graduate student, said the radar stations need to be calibrated to make sure they are tracking objects of interest as accurately as possible. He said the satellite was purposefully named Hoʻoponopono 2 because of the work it will be doing in space.
"Hooponopono" means "to make right" in Hawaiian.
"We think that’s a fitting name because we’re calibrating the radar stations, we’re making things right," Martin said.
About 50 students from the UH-Manoa College of Engineering’s Small Satellite Program have spent the past four years working on Hoʻoponopono 2.
NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) Program accepted a UH proposal to launch the satellite after Hawaii placed third in the Air Force’s University Nanosatellite Program competition in 2011, competing against schools like MIT and Cornell, the school announced on its website in September.
Martin said the tiny space traveler will replace two satellites currently in orbit — one that has already been decommissioned and one he said is expected to become nonoperational at any time — that are 20 times larger and 40 times more expensive to operate than the H2.
The size of the satellite compared with its functionality is what’s truly astounding about the project, Martin said.
"Most people think of satellites being the size of a car, the size of a bus even, but this is something that can fit in the palm of your hand," he said of the 9-pound, 4-by-4-by-13-inch object. "To work on something that cutting-edge and that’s actually providing a need for the Air Force is great; I think that’s one of the cool parts about working on a project like this."
The satellite’s orbit will be circular (rather than elliptical) at an inclination of 40.5 degrees and an altitude of 310 miles.
Ten other schools, including a high school, launched student-built cube satellites during Tuesday’s mission, Martin said, but H2 is UH’s first. Martin called the launch a milestone for the program and the university and its College of Engineering.
"This is something we can be proud of," he said.
