SlugSat mission:
To educate and develop the next generation of space industry professionals at UC Santa Cruz.
To do this, we are developing a small satellite, known as a CubeSat. This satellite was selected as part of NASA’s CubeSat Student Launch Initiative, and will be deployed from the International Space Station later next year.
We are building the spacecraft from the ground up, and we’ve formed a highly interdisciplinary team in order to do it. Student members have backgrounds in physics, software, mechanical design, and electrical engineering, and continue to broaden their skill sets with each new challenge. Our goal is to give UC Santa Cruz students and scientists a platform in low Earth orbit to further atmospheric research and lay a foundation for space-based engineering at UCSC. Beyond giving undergraduates hands-on experience, SlugSat is designed to serve both UCSC scientists and the greater community. Our satellite will carry two payloads: a student-built HF linear transponder for amateur radio use, and a terrestrial gamma-ray flash experiment provided by the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics. From these efforts, SlugSat is paving the way for an ongoing space program at UCSC and is finally providing students with access to aerospace engineering. Every aspect of this project is student-driven, from design to management to execution. Our primary goal is to finish a “flat sat”​ which is all of the systems of the satellite laid out on a table (“flat”​) and working to specification.