This June, the OKSat team accompanied Oklahoma State University's Cowboy Rocketworks to the annual Spaceport America Cup at Spaceport America in Truth or Consequences, NM. This event serves as one of the largest international rocketry events with a total of 152 teams present, 66 of those being international teams. At this event, Cowboy Rocketworks aimed to fly their newest custom-wound carbon fiber rocket Arachne to a height of 30k feet. Tyler Graham, Forrest Tuschhoff, and Austin Parris of the OKSat team designed and developed Arachne's payload: a prototype of the optical receiver payload for their upcoming CubeSat mission.

The goal with this payload was to print a CubeSat compliant version of the future optical receiver payload which had previously been confined to an optical testbench setup. This prototype would be characterized in lab, flown, and then recharacterized after in an effort to gain understanding of the effects of a real launch on the payload. 

Unfortunately, due to hazardous weather conditions, Arachne was not able to fly at this event. However, the OKSat team is looking forward to launching its prototype payload with Cowboy Rocketworks this August at AIRfest 30 in Argonia KS!

This spring, the OKSat senior design team consisting of Jacob Kay, Jacob Minick, Logan Larsh, Shawn Bejcek, and Tyler Graham has been hard at work proving that a CubeSat mission is feasible for CSLI funding this upcoming fall. This has included designing the CubeSat, proving that it has a workable power budget, ensuring it will stay within temperature parameters, simulating real-life orbits it may end up on, and developing its novel 1U optical receiver. 

At Oklahoma State University's Senior Design Expo for this spring, the OKSat team was awarded the "Best Marketing Video Award" for their promotional video, shown to the right. We can't wait to see what future senior design teams will accomplish!