Students Designing And Building Satellites: Penn State’s Lionsat And The University Nanosat Program

The Local Ionospheric Measurements Satellite (LionSat) mission provides a wealth of learning experiences for the students who are involved in designing, building, and flying Penn State’s first student-built satellite [Mistoco et al., 2003]. A key part of LionSat is the educational programming available to students of diverse backgrounds and academic interests. Our educational goal is to prepare students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for productive careers in technical and nontechnical fields relating to space systems and science. The LionSat mission introduces relevant hands-on opportunities to students through design problems, science questions, case studies, research investigations, leadership experiences, organizational issues, etc. LionSat introduces meaningful and realistic project examples into the classroom and laboratory, which enhance student learning.