STF-1 is scheduled to launch on ELaNA XIX via a brand new rocket called the Electron. This rocket is currently being built and tested by Rocket Labs USA. This launch is planned to have an inclination of 85° and an altitude of 500km. This means that STF-1 will travel around the earth from approximately pole to pole every orbit, will travel around the earth about once every hour and a half, and will be about 100km higher than the International Space Station (ISS) but about 35,000km lower than DirectTV and Dish Network TV satellites!
This announcement brings with it some schedule updates:
Mission Readiness Review: March 2017
Delivery: April 2017
Launch: June 2017
This means that the STF-1 team has under a year to get everything done before delivery! Even better news is that we have already received our first instrument delivery form the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department at West Virginia University. The Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) was developed at WVU with the help of the University of South Florida under the Small Satellite Technology Partnership. The IMU design was miniaturized to overcome the size, weight, and power constraints placed on our spacecraft. The third generation of the board that has been made custom for STF-1 has 32 sensors on it that will be individually calibrated by student designed rate tables and temperature chambers to give us the best possible data.
Updated information has also been provided by all science payloads allowing us to further update the location of all the components. The recent model with expanded information is shown below. This slide was presented at the 13th annual CubeSat Developers Workshop along with a full mission overview.
