A prototype of PolarCube is in development at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. (Alexander Joyce/CU Independent)

At the tippy-top of the Discovery Learning Center at CU Boulder, sophomore Will Sear excitedly explains how the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC) will make a 3-D temperature map of the entire Earth.

The electrical engineering major dives into every detail of the instrument that will hitch a ride on a rocket and go into orbit in a couple years’ time. He speaks with his hands to a stranger, explaining every technicality with a pronounced gesture.

After a few minutes of inspiring yet confusing words to a layman, a fellow staff member interrupts Sear.

The person he is speaking to is not an engineer, but a journalist.

“I thought we were trying to look for new people,” Sear says as he laughs. “I didn’t realize you were writing a story.”

He gathers his thoughts.

“Okay. This is good! See, people normally don’t care.”

People in the general public may not care about PolarCube, but people at major agencies certainly do.

PolarCube has received letters of support from Air Force Research Laboratories, the Air Force Weather Agency, the National Ice Center and is collaborating with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

The project also gets some funding indirectly from Lockheed Martin and even NASA, though the main source comes from NSIDC.

NASA funds part of the PolarCube project by way of COSGC. Seventeen universities in Colorado receive money from Space Grant, but CU Boulder is its flagship program. Around 70 students are in the program at CU overall, and about half of those are working on PolarCube. COSGC has Brian Sanders, the deputy director of Colorado’s Space Grant to oversee projects, but for all the actual work, networking and communication that gets things done—it comes from the students.

The PolarCube team is currently working on the complicated process of seeing how its data can best aid current weather models.

PolarCube’s unique 118-gigahertz frequency can sense temperatures in the first two levels of the Earth’s atmosphere, even through cloud cover and up to 12 miles above the surface.

Physically, PolarCube itself is a box only a few inches across. It will be attached to a rocket along with other separate CubeSats (what these small tag-along satellites are often called) similar in size. There is always a main payload on board as well, most commonly a higher priority and larger satellite. Once the rocket is launched, PolarCube is ejected at the proper moment to go into its own separate orbit.

As of now, the PolarCube team is working on a prototype before the final product is put together. Originally the team planned to send up only one CubeSate. But Glenda Alvarenga, the PolarCube Project manager, said there has been so much interest in PolarCube that there might be enough interest and funding to send up two.

The team is hoping PolarCube will be sent into a polar orbit, hence the name of the project. This type of orbit goes over both north and south poles, allowing a full scan of the Earth. The team can suggest where it would like it to be sent, but ultimately it doesn’t have the final say. With any other orbit, only a fraction of the surface can be observed.

And while PolarCube will go up on a rocket, the team doesn’t yet know what kind or when. SpaceX’s Falcon 9s have been used a lot recently, and even a launch partnered with the Air Force is possible. The team should find out in the coming months about PolarCube’s orbit and launch, Rouw said.

PolarCube faces many challenges before its tentative launch period of late 2016 to early 2017. The main obstacle is to construct such a small radiometer, only a few inches in length. The one that will be used is many times smaller than a radiometer from the 1970s. One from that time now sits in the basement of the ECEE (Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering) building on campus. It takes up almost the entire room it’s in.

One of PolarCube’s parts is so difficult to build the team has to outsource it to be professionally 3-D printed. The electrical boards are also too small for students to do by hand, so they are designed and sent to a lab for a machine to do it.

Once PolarCube is in orbit, mission control will take over at the COSGC headquarters. When the data comes in, COSGC does the initial processing and then sends it to NSIDC. This process will take place throughout PolarCube’s lifetime, which will last at least anywhere from nine months to a year and a half. Once all the information has been collected, the satellite will disintegrate in the Earth’s atmosphere.

But that, most likely, won’t take place until 2018 or 2019—a lot of work still needs to be done.

At the same time, a lot of work has already been done.

In the COSGC room, Sear and another student, senior aerospace engineering major Franklin Hinckley, recall when they finished second in a national competition this past January in New Mexico. They performed countless tests to prove that PolarCube would work. The team returned and didn’t get any recognition from the university, and the school even took 40 percent of its winnings away from them. Other schools got much more attention, even if they didn’t place as high, Sear said.

Aerospace student Franklin Hinckley is diligently working on the star camera board. The star camera is responsible for taking pictures of stars and creating a map that allows for tracking of PolarCube. (Alexander Joyce/CU Independent)

They checked the “CU-Boulder Today” news emails the next few days and laughed at how the topics paled in comparison to what they were doing. Sear summarizes one article as, “Here’s what the economics faculty is up to! Here’s two papers they published!”

Hinckley then emphatically stated a claim for the importance of PolarCube.

“A student team is building something that’s going to get launched into space,” he said.

The PolarCube team members know they are doing something special. Whether anyone pays attention is out of their control.

For more information about PolarCube visit: http://spacegrant.colorado.edu/allstar-projects/polarcube.

Contact CU Independent Assistant Sports Editor Jared Funk-Breay at jared.funkbreay@colorado.edu and follow him on twitter @jaredfunkbreay. 

Note: The story incorrectly said that Franklin Hinckley is an astrodynamics major. He is an aerospace engineering major. The reference has been corrected.