Could a Rowan project change space exploration?
GLASSBORO - A small cube of South Jersey-built technology may be orbiting the Earth by 2018.
Sangho Shin, a Rowan University engineering professor, nearly jumped out of his desk chair last week when NASA replied to his email.
Shin, the principal investigator of the MemSat project, pitched his idea to the national space administration in November, seeking approval for space on a rocket launch.
"It's no longer a dream, it became real," Shin, formerly of the University of California-Santa Cruz, told the Courier-Post Friday.
Shin has been with Rowan just six months. In that time, he hatched his plan to launch a compact "memristor" into orbit that could lift Rowan into a new realm of scientific work.
The university would be the first institution or agency in New Jersey chosen by NASA to fly equipment as auxiliary payloads aboard Venture Class Launch Services rockets.
Rowan is in elite company in the seventh round of NASA-endorsed projects in the CubeSat, or nanosatellite program. The Glassboro university is among 20 agencies selected, including MIT, NASA's Ames and Langley research centers, and California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the Mars Rover.
Before Rowan's MemSat cube is launched, a team of four South Jersey engineering professors and countless undergrads in the College of Engineering must build the 4-inch by 4-inch cube satellite, meeting NASA's next set of rigorous standards before a 2018 launch. The prototype could be complete by the end of the summer.
The project is highly technical — an electrical and computer engineer's dream project.
Their challenge is to test a memristor — short for memory resistor — against space's harshest condition. In the sun's strongest heat and the final frontier's coldest cold, in zero gravity and a vacuum, the memristor, an extremely small memory-storing device, must be able to hold information. If it does, the experiment is a success.
They'll first conduct tests in their terrestrial labs in Rowan Hall, where the satellite will be tested in a vacuum machine and ovens.
Memristors are the fourth and newest basic electrical element. The three main elements — resistor, inductor and capacitor — have been long known. The memristor was first proposed in the 1970s, but was not fully recognized until the mid 2000s, according to Robi Polikar, head of the college's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Polikar is working with Shin and two more professors of electrical and computer engineering — John Schmalzel and Robert Krchnavek.
The memristor, used for extremely small memory elements, will be compared side-by-side with conventional memory in the harshest environment of space for robustness, reliability, low power and density, Shin explained.
Krchnavek will develop the communication technology for the satellite to transmit information back to Earth before the satellite burns up in orbit a year after its launch. Schmalzel will create the electrical system linking the memristor, memory devices, communication transmitters and a battery.
The power supply will be built by 100 sophomore electronics students as part of course curriculum. They'll be challenged to build a battery that relies on sunlight, but powers the satellite when it's far from the sun. Plus, it has to be light and small to fit in the softball-sized satellite.
"Student involvement is one of the major parts of our proposal," Shin explained.
Rowan engineering students participate in clinical work to solve real problems.
Memristors that have never before been sent to space "is truly an unsolved problem," Polikar added.
"Their properties, how they would work in the harsh space environments are unknown," he explained.
"But if they do work, they would have great benefits to NASA for their lower power requirements and speed."
If the experiment is a success, it could be a critical advancement in space technology. Long-lasting memory devices that retain information while powered off — like, an instant computer that never needs to boot up — could be used on everything the space administration needs, Krchnavek said.
"It opens up a whole new area of space exploration," Schmalzel said.
"It makes things possible that were never possible before."
A successful experiment would lend major credibility to Rowan's program, and establish those working on it as memristor experts, Polikar expects.
"It would allow them to go after future funding opportunities for a variety of projects with this experiment under their belt," he said.
Carly Q. Romalino; (856) 486-2476; firstname.lastname@example.org