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Shoot for the Stars

Reaching for the stars is a real possibility in NBCC’s Electronics Engineering Technology program! Students in this program have opportunities to work on applied research with CubeSat NB, a first-of-its-kind partnership among NBCC, the Université de Moncton, and the University of New Brunswick.

CubeSat NB provides learners an opportunity to participate in the design, building and testing of New Brunswick’s first cube satellite, named VIOLET after our provincial flower.

So far, with the guidance of faculty members Saadmaan Rahman and Réjean Barriault, NBCC students have used their senior technical projects to develop a UHF helical antenna for the CubeSat NB ground station, a software-defined radio also for the ground station, and a second revision of one of printed circuit boards.

VIOLET is currently in its critical design phase and is scheduled to deploy from the International Space Station in 2022. VIOLET will provide new insights into the behaviour of Earth’s ionosphere, receiving signals transmitted by global navigation satellite systems, like GPS.

Researchers will be able to use the data to further study how the ionosphere changes from place to place over times, and how it responds to space weather, which can interfere with communications systems and electrical grids.