ION (satellite)

The Illinois Observing Nanosatellite (ION) is the first CubeSat mission developed by the students of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The satellite was lost in the failure of the Dnepr launch on 26 July 2006. Completed in April 2005 as a part of the Illinois Tiny Satellite Initiative,^[1] the satellite took almost four years to be designed, built and tested by an interdisciplinary team of student engineers.^[2] The payloads included a photometer, a micro-thruster and a camera.

Mission objectives

The science and technology objectives of the ION-1 mission were aimed at advancing key enabling technologies for CubeSats:^[3]

1. Measurement of oxygen intensity in Earth's ionosphere to understand how energy transfers occur across large regions
2. Test the MicroVacuum Arc Thruster (μVAT), a versatile small satellite propulsion technology for lateral movement and fine-control of attitude
3. Test the SID processor board designed specifically for small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO)
4. Test a small CMOS camera for Earth imaging
5. Demonstrate attitude stabilization on a CubeSat

Future missions at UIUC

ION-1 was built using the IlliniSat-1 bus. The upgraded IlliniSat-2 bus is now under development for missions such as Lower Atmosphere Ionosphere Coupling Experiment (LAICE) and the CubeSail, both to be launched in 2016.^[4]