During the summer of 2022, I became involved in a student organization called Bronco Space where I have worked volunteer hours in a team effort to build space systems. The first project I got involved with was a 1U cube satellite named Yearling, where I became the Lead Software Engineer for the project. 

Summary of the Project and goals:

PROVES, or the Pleiades Rapid Orbital Verification Experimental System, has launched Cal Poly Pomona's Student Organization, Bronco Space's Second Satellite into Orbit. Yearling is a 1U cube satellite that was involved in SpaceX's rideshare mission Transporter-6, which launched on January 3rd 2023 at approximately 9:56 am ET. PROVES-Yearling is built on the PyCubed architecture and is intended to serve as a lab bench in space. Yearling is carrying a Sony Spresense camera payload for attitude determination in addition to 3 IMUs. The system is designed to target modularity and low-cost hardware to create a CubeSat kit that can be made available to other university CubeSat programs to provide an educational platform for development. Complete kits will eventually be available for purchase, but Universities will also be able to access the open source files for the entire kit as well, so they may modify the design and produce their own modifications. The kit aims to bridge the knowledge gap between what undergraduates are taught and the knowledge required to engineer a spacecraft. PROVES-Yearling and our next satellite PROVES-Xmera are intended to help the kit come to fruition.