The first made-in-Saskatchewan satellite has been constructed by a group of engineering students at the University of Saskatchewan. Not only was it successfully created, but on June 3rd, it will be launched to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket.
Arliss Sidloski, one of the students who worked on the satellite, says the process began in early 2018. She and her team are very excited to monitor it for the next few years, before it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere. She says the satellite is called RADSAT-SK and is part of the Canadian CubeSat Project ran by the Canadian Space Agency. The CSA works with a subcontractor called Nanoracks, who happens to have a CubeSat deployer on the International Space Station. Sidloski says the main reason for sending their satellite to space is the technology that’s on board, which was developed by several of USask professors. Dr. Li Chen developed a dosimeter board to measure radiation from space at a reduced cost to current methods, and Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova created a fungal melanin coating that acts as a radiation shield.