Building a Satellite

Money and lots of it.

Extensive knowledge of space engineering.

A large engineering organization.

1. What do you want the satellite to do? This will tell you whether you can do it yourself or have someone else do it.

2. If you can do it yourself, find someone to finance you and your group.

3. If you can't do it yourself, you can hire someone else to do it for you.

If I remember correctly, this has been done before, i.e., students building a satellite. With this in mind, I won't discourage you. Go for you dreams guys!

Yeah go for it!!!

After all a rock would make a good satellite! it doesn't have to be anything more than a lightweight object to put into a temporary orbit to make it a satellite!

I played with rockets in my 20's, trouble was in the UK the airspace is pretty congested, and air traffic control don't like you launching missiles into their airspace!!

John.

I have never designed a satellite but since this is a school project I would suggest you keep it simple. Just get it to do one thing like calculate its position and transmit it back to you. That way you can confirm it actually is in orbit.

For the engineering side of it you will need to consider at least the following

Heat dissipation (cooling things in a vacuum is difficult)

Radiation (level of radiation in space can damage most electronics)

Shielding (induced voltages from many sources could be severe)

Power (you will need to keep the power consumption to a minimum)

Weight (Small increase in weight means huge increase in fuel)

Acceleration (The acceleration during launch can be severe)

Temperature (The temperature can vary dramatically between sunlit and shaded side)

By far the most important factor is weight. I can't remember the formula but the amount of fuel and hence size of the launch vehicle increases dramatically with the weight. Keep in mind that any increase in fuel also need to be lifted by the rocket. This means that there is actually a maximum weight that a particular fuel can get to orbit. To give you an example back in the Apollo days the upper stages need to use liquid H₂ and O₂. Any other fuel wouldn't have been able to accelerate the spacecraft and itself to escape velocity.

Others may be able to add some other things to consider but I believe these are the main ones. Good luck and if you go ahead with it please keep us posted of your progress.

With a lot of persistance, a little ingenuity and just a touch of denial, you can do almost anything!!!

(Wm. Scott Smith of Spokane personal motto)
scott712

Likely, you can build your own satellite, but getting it into orbit is another thing. There have been many student and amateur satellite projects that have become reality, but not without the help and approval of NASA (in the USA anyway).

Check out AMSAT - The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation AMSAT is a worldwide group of Amateur Radio Operators who share an active interest in building, launching and then communicating with each other through these satellites via Amateur Radio. The first amateur satellite was called OSCAR, for Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio, which was launched in 1961, just 4 years after Sputnik. AMSAT continues the original OSCAR program as well as developing new amateur satellite projects, and often student groups are involved in the effort.

The new satellite user FAQ page has lots of info.

A program affiliated with AMSAT is the CubeSat program which has allowed students at universities to design and build experimental satellites within certain size, weight, and other technical parameters which would allow them to be easily carried and launched "piggyback" on the rockets of other satellite missions.

Students (Midshipmen) at the Naval Academy were responsible for several satellite programs, including the recent "SuitSat", where a former Soviet Cosmonaut spacesuit was "launched" from the Space Shuttle (more like simply "released") with its beacon and telemetry tracked by Amateur Radio operators (Hams) and Short-wave Listeners (SWLers) all over the world as it orbit the earth, eventually falling into the earth's atmosphere and burning up.

Under the tutelage of Bob Bruninga, the "guru" of APRS radio-tracking systems, midshipmen also launched a short-lived APRS transponder that was intended to pickup APRS signals from amataur radio mobile APRS units in areas that did not have good digipeater coverage, and relay them to the internet, as the digipeater systems does.

So yes, students can "make a satellite" but it is not as easy as it sounds, and often takes a great deal of money, and definitely the backing of NASA and/or AMSAT.