The ARLISS program celebrates its 10th season this year!
Ten years of never losing a student payload due to launch or airframe failure.
More than 100 M flights!
A Rocket Launch for
International Student Satellites
The ARLISS program celebrates its
10th season this year!
Ten years of never losing a student payload
due to launch or airframe failure.
More than 100 M flights!
2008 Schedule
What is ARLISS?
ARLISS began as a cooperative program between Professor Bob Twiggs of Stanford,
his colleagues at other universities worldwide and members of AeroPac led by
Pius Morizumi and Tom Rouse. The first ARLISS event was held in 1999.
Goals. The goals of the program are to provide a learning experience - both for
advanced high school and college level students and for AeroPac members (fliers)
as well.
For the students - they learn the complete collaborative design process to
design a complex electronic and computer payload (a satellite) that will have to
operate in a standard, but harsh environment. For the fliers, they learn to hone
their skills of designing highly reliable and repeatable flight operations.
Key to the ARLISS program are reliable flight and support operations provided by
AeroPac members.
Reliable delivery of standard payloads (CanSat and Open) to a reasonably consistent altitude (11k' AGL Black Rock). The ARLISS team takes extraordinary pride in never having lost a student payload to flight failure. A few payloads have not been successfully deployed, but none lost.
Provide the infrastructure for the event. Airframes built to deliver standard payloads to consistent altitudes. Provide motors for each launch. Provide a launch site and launch operations including FAA, BLM and other regulatory agency management. Provide basic sanitary facilities.
And more recently, AeroPac, at Bob Twiggs' request, has provided a one stop, non-profit financial support for launch fees, flight operations costs, and regulatory fees.
The program has evolved over the years. While initially focused on rather
unintelligent (by today's standards) student satellites the size of soft drink
can (and launched three at a time - rather like Bob Twigg's CubeSats), the
program quickly moved to where the dominant payload is the Open Class of a
single coffee can sized payload containing a complex satellite capable of
autonomous operation with heavy use of real-time bidirectional radio
communications, GPS and autonomous robotic design. The ComeBack competition of
the last few years has seen some dramatic technology of remote rovers, fliers
and sophisticated communications both in flight and on the ground. A second
airframe using K motors has been developed to allow lower cost, more convenient
flights of Classic CanSat payloads alongside of M motored Open Class flights.
The program has been overall a dramatic success and the universities involved
have consistently asked for two high priority enhancements to the program: more
capacity for more flights (particularly M) and Internet access so that more
students can remotely participate and the quality of their robotic systems can
be improved.
Who Runs ARLISS?
ARLISS is a cooperative activity between students, their high schools and
universities, AeroPac, and the fliers that are largely AeroPac members. The
creator and inspirational leader is Bob Twiggs and AeroPac manages the event in
cooperation with Bob's overall leadership.
With AeroPac's recent incorporation as an educational non-profit, ARLISS is a
major component of our non-profit educational mission. While the program has
historically been loosely organized based on the enthusiasm in any given year of
some core fliers, Bob's (and the participating schools) expressed desire to
expand the program both added capacity and with added capability (e.g. Internet
access) motivates a bit more structured management.
Beginning with ARLISS 2008, AeroPac's President (Tony Alcocer) supported by the
AeroPac Board of Directors has appointed an ARLISS Steering Committee of
experienced ARLISS participants to guide the program. For 2008, this Committee
consists of Becky Green, Tom Rouse and Ken Biba. They will organize the efforts
with the students (through Bob Twiggs) and with the fliers to provide the best
possible educational experience both for the students as well as the fliers.
Who Pays for ARLISS?
ARLISS is a volunteer, non-profit program. It is funded from several sources.
The costs of motors, partial repair of ARLISS airframes, regulatory fees and sanitation costs are paid for by the participating universities. AeroPac takes no profit from these fees.
The student payloads and their travel costs are funded by the participating Universities and the students.
ARLISS fliers invest in creating the airframe used for this program. Beginning in 2008 the costs of this airframe may be tax deductible (see your tax advisor) based on AeroPac's (and hence ARLISS) non-profit status.
What is the 2008 Plan for ARLISS?
The 2008 ARLISS Steering Committee has brainstormed about the 2008 program and
proposes the following themes for this year.
Improving flight operations.
One the key elements is increasing flight capacity while maintaining reliability and consistent performance. We think that standardizing the carrier and payload prep is a key element of that. We propose a standard ARLISS provided carrier (the classic PML phenolic) that is provided in large quantity and is effectively disposable and permits students to easily and quickly integrate their payloads.
We propose centralizing motor prep, motor cleaning and airframe integration near the student satellite prep area to minimize confusion, maximize mentoring of new fliers and the inevitable scurrying about that old, increasing arthritic folks like Ken, Tom, and Beck. None of the Steering Committee plans to fly this year to focus on the event.
Adding a bit more fun. We propose adding a few colored motors to the mix this year (while maintaining the same price to the students) to add a bit more flair without compromising basic program goals.
Adding more capability. Bob Twiggs (in collaboration with San Jose State University , the California Space Authority, Ken Biba and Paul Hopkins) is developing a Virtual Classroom that will not only bring real-time telemetry, Internet, WiFi and video to the playa .. but deliver a collaborative project tool so that students on the playa can work with their colleagues back home or on the Internet. We expect this to be available for ARLISS 2008 and prototyped by MudRock.
Next Steps
We'll have a 2008 ARLISS team meeting soon to discuss all of the above, new
ideas and show off cool equipment.
If you would like to participate, sign up to the
ARLISS flier's email list.