A Portable, Quick-Response, Satellite Beacon Tracking Unit

The Aerospace Corporation Engineering, 2006-07

Liaison(s): Samuel Osofsky ’85, Christopher Clark
Advisor(s): John Molinder
Students(s): Tyler Brown, Daniel LaValle, Matt Totino (TL), Christ Pong (F), Anthony Weerasinghe (F), Jason Choi (S), Jeff Jones (S)

Motivated by the desire to track picosatellites more conveniently, Aerospace has asked the team to design and build a system that demonstrates the ability to track satellites from a small, passive ground station. The team’s solution uses a small array of antennas to make phase measurements, and work on the project includes receiver hardware design as well as software algorithms to compute the satellite’s position.