Professor Edmund Spencer, right, describes the antenna that will receive signals from the University of South Alabama's JagSat-1 as graduate student Salman Kabir troubleshoots a signal amplifier.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com

With their satellite due to be kicked out the door of the International Space Station in the near future, researchers at the University of South Alabama spent Tuesday getting ready to receive the signals they hope JagSat-1 will soon be beaming their way.

It turns out that cutting-edge space science can have a lot in common with old-fashioned home TV reception. As a crane readied to lift a large metal antenna base onto the roof of Shelby Hall, the JagSat team tinkered with the actual antenna in a lab inside the building. Bristling with short metal rods, it looked like close kin to the spiky rigs that topped the typical American home in the days before cable. It even had a motor to rotate it in search of the best reception.

Graduate student Salman Kabir, one of dozens of students who’ve worked on the JagSat project over the last few years, fiddled with a power amplifier, coaxing it to boost the range of frequencies the team expects to receive. Professor Edmund Spencer, one of the lead researchers on the project, looked on.

“We needed a radio frequency antenna expert,” Spencer said of the recruitment of Kabir to do a little troubleshooting.

An antenna base lies in front of USA's Shelby Hall on Aug. 30, 2022, before being hoisted to the roof of the building. The antenna it holds will receive signals from JagSat-1, a satellite designed and built by USA faculty and students.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com

Spencer in particular has invested a great deal of work in the success of JagSat-1. It’s carrying an instrument he designed to test a new method of measuring the density of ionized plasma at the far outer edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. The plasma can affect signals passing from satellites to the surface, so a better understanding of it could help a variety of systems that depend on those signals. It could, for example, improve the precision of GPS systems.

JagSat-1 is what’s known as a CubeSat – a standard format for scientific satellites based on 10-centimeter cubes. It’s a double unit, so it’s rectangular and a little smaller than a shoebox. In the works for more than five years, it got a smooth ride into space July 14 aboard a Dragon capsule carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Next Tuesday, if things go according to plan, a launcher carrying it and other CubeSats will be pushed out the airlock of the ISS, and the launcher will release the tiny instruments into the void to do whatever it is they were designed to do.

In the case of JagSat-1, that’s to zap the plasma with an electrical pulse and measure the results. Current methods are slow, Spencer said, which makes it hard to map changes in the density of the plasma. His approach is theoretically faster, but produces results that are harder to interpret. That’s why the antenna going up atop Shelby Hall is a critical link: It will receive raw data that needs a lot of processing after it has been received.

A crane hoists an antenna base onto the roof of Shelby Hall at the University of South Alabama on Aug. 30, 2022. The antenna is part of a ground station that will receive and interpret data from a satellite built by USA faculty and students.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com

As the satellite passes through space, it’ll emit a beacon signal. When the ground station “sees” the beacon, it’ll send what Spencer calls a “do-next” signal, calling for the satellite to dump its data. This process could happen a couple of times a day, Spencer said. The little satellite’s life span is an unknown, but probably will be measured in months.

Samuel Russ, another USA electrical engineering professor involved in the project, said it’ll be a triumph if JagSat-1 connects with the ground station for even one data delivery.

When the data does come, Spencer said, a new phase of work begins. The data sent back by JagSat-1 will be like a series of unfocused pictures showing the plasma’s broad-spectrum response to an electrical pulse. Somewhere in the resulting pattern of energy, Spencer said, there will be a telltale resonance showing the density of the plasma.

Finding it will be tricky for a variety of reasons. One is that the plasma interacts with the satellite itself, Spencer said. That creates an interference that has to be masked out. “It’s going to do something that has a pattern of its own,” he said.

All in all, he said, it could be months before the team really knows whether the experiment accomplished what they hoped.

University of South Alabama students and faculty involved with the JagSat-1 project watch as an antenna base is positioned on the roof of Shelby Hall on Aug. 30, 2022. At right is professor Samuel Russ; third from right is professor Edmund Spencer.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com

“If the reading that comes out looks exactly like my theory, then there’s no analysis to do and everything is going to be wonderful,” Spencer said. “That’s highly unlikely,” he added, laughing. “What’s going to happen is, it’s going to look like some deformed beast that comes out, and we’re going to have to try to figure out whether there’s anything in there.”

If the results do bear out Spencer’s theories, it sets the stage for a bigger, more robust plasma-mapping satellite to be developed using the same approach.

Spencer said the JagSat-1 project’s funding was in the ballpark of $200,000, with half coming from NASA and half from the National Science Foundation. NASA bore additional costs such as the launch, he said.

A whiteboard in a lab inside Shelby Hall at the University of Alabama shows the antenna system that will receive and interpret data from a satellite built by USA faculty and students.Lawrence Specker | LSpecker@AL.com

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