Embry-Riddle Students Win Design Competition

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Embry-Riddle Student Team Wins Satellite Design Competition

Daytona Beach, Fla., June 1, 2006 -- An Engineering Physics senior design project team from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University won the second annual Florida University Satellite (FUNSAT) Design Competition held in May at the Florida Space Port Authority campus.

Hosted by the Florida Space Grant Consortium, the competition challenged student teams from across Florida to submit a design for a real-life 10-centimeter “CubeSat” that is to be built, tested, and eventually launched. Each design was judged by aerospace professionals on its innovation, creativity, technical merit, and feasibility, along with the quality of a presentation given by the team during a workshop at the end of the competition.

Embry-Riddle’s winning team competed against teams from the Florida Institute of Technology, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Florida. These four teams completed Phase I of the competition by December 2005, with each team receiving up to $2,500 for further study. By winning Phase II of the competition, the Embry-Riddle team will receive an additional $7,500 to build engineering and flight models of their proposed picosatellite (very small satellite) for testing, in preparation for a launch into low Earth orbit in 2007 or later.

The Embry-Riddle project, titled TEMP (Thermoelectric Energy Managing Picosatellite), is a multifunctional orbital laboratory designed to investigate the possibility of using solar heat to generate power via thermoelectric generators. TEMP also includes a revolutionary active-attitude control system that, if successfully tested on-orbit, will represent a significant advancement in picosatellite design.

TEMP team members designed every aspect of the mission, using the knowledge gained through the Engineering Physics core curriculum, combined with faculty and electronic resources. The members of the team were Engineering Physics undergraduates Bridget Brown, Japheth Saecker, Mike Tencza, and Anthony Vareha, and Mechanical Engineering undergraduate Richard Walther. Their faculty advisor was Dr. Irfan Azeem, an associate professor of Engineering Physics in Embry-Riddle’s Physical Sciences Department.

“The FUNSAT competition gave our students the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the challenging experience of designing and building a complete satellite,” said Dr. Azeem. “We’re very proud of their achievement, especially since they competed against some impressive designs.”

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering. Embry-Riddle educates more than 32,000 students annually in undergraduate and graduate programs at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., through the Extended Campus at more than 130 centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, and through distance learning.