Closing the Deep Space Communications Link with Commercial Assets

Growing commercial and governmental interest in lunar and asteroid resource extraction, as well as continuing interest in deep space scientific missions, means an increase in demand for deep space communications systems. Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s MarCo demonstrated the viability and usefulness of cubesats as relay stations for deep space communications. Given their relatively low cost of construction and launch, cubesats can decrease the cost of building deep space communication systems. This has the potential to make it feasible for a group without a large budget, such as a university cubesat team, to build such a system. However, while minimizing the cost of the satellite is important, it is only one part of the communications link. The ground station is the other. The cost of accessing the Deep Space Network puts it out of reach for most operations that are not NASA programs, including our student-designed and built University of Colorado Earth Escape Explorer (CU-E3) 6U cubesat. This means that a project such as ours has to look at options provided by commercial ground station services. As a competitor in the NASA Cubequest Challenge Deep Space Derby, the CU-E3 team’s goal is to demonstrate it is possible to build a deep space communications system that is small, powerful, and (relatively) low cost. This means not just the hardware on the satellite but also the ground station. On the satellite side, we have developed custom hardware to interface with an AstroDev Li-2 radio for C-band uplink. For downlink, we will be using an X-band radio developed for low earth applications at the University of Colorado Boulder under the NASA Small Satellite Technology Development program. For ground station services, we will be partnering with a commercial provider, ATLAS. This paper describes the architecture of the CU-E3 communications system, the challenges of developing a communications system small enough to fit in a 6U cubesat yet powerful enough for deep space, and the process we used to research and partner with a commercial ground station service to help us fulfill our mission

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Development of low cost device for in-situ algae monitoring

Water quality monitoring for Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in large coastal and inland environments currently relies on techniques that are expensive and, in the case of aerial photography, are unable to provide data necessary to help predict future events. The development of a technique that is inexpensive and simple enough for anyone to use is important to the research surrounding HABs and the dangerous conditions they can bring about for aquatic and human life. The goal of this research is the development of a prototype, handheld, low cost device for in-situ monitoring of potentially harmful algae species whose presence could lead to a HAB. Using visible light spectrophotometry incorporated with a near-field enhanced nano biosensor, the concentrations of harmful algae in water samples can be measured and determined to be safe or dangerous, prompting further data collection and surveillance