Utah company uses small satellites for science education


4 photos
Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

SANDY — You might think of satellites as school bus-sized communications or weather devices, but many satellites going into orbit are about the size of a softball.

One Utah start-up company is using small satellites to bring space into classrooms.

The Sandy-based company ArduSat sells kits containing circuit boards and sensors that students can program to measure temperature, light, magnetic fields and many other things.

"We have a school out in Brazil that wants to measure the ozone hole above their country," said Sunny Washington, company president. "Or if they want to understand light pollution (they can) use our luminosity sensor for that."

The space kits mimic the function and size of actual satellites that currently are orbiting more than 1,200 miles overhead. Once students finish their space kits in the classroom, ArduSat tests their codes and sends their project to one of the actual satellites.

"They go up and they fly in lower earth orbit," Washington said. "These fly around the world in about 96 minutes."

Ben Smith, an environmental sciences teacher at Rowland Hall Middle School, demonstrated some of the projects his students are putting together with their ArduSat cube. Among them is a tool to collect data on Utah's infamous inversion.

Photo: KSL-TV
Photo: KSL-TV

"Combining with what we're measuring on the ground to what you can measure from space, to look at the thickness of our inversion or inversions, and some of the changes in how light is moving around, or heat, or energy," he said.

Smith and Washington said there are not enough students with STEM degrees to fill related jobs.

"Every kid, at one time or another, wanted to be an astronaut or wanted to go into space of the world above them. So that's the hook to get them interested in science," Smith said. "I think there are some great opportunities for kids to come out of this, to realize anything is possible."

ArduSat sells classroom launch packs for $2,500. Each of those packs comes with seven space kits packed with various boards and sensors that will be used in conjunction with real satellites.

Last month, ArduSat announced it raised $1 million from various investors to expand its program.

Photos

Related links

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

Utah
Bill Gephardt

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast