Competition, research and extension: the three approaches to the popularization of small satellites in the Alto Paraopeba region in Brazil

Abstract

There are several approaches to the diffusion of the space technologies, three of them are in this work: competition, research, and extension. Thus, the objective of this work is to focus on presenting the results of the Brazilian nanosatellite team called NoizOrbita, and also to qualify quantitatively the impact of using these approaches in popularizing the topic of small satellites for space educational purposes. The team was founded on September 29, 2020, by three people: an alumni of Telecommunications Engineering at Federal University of São João del- Rei (UFSJ), Alto Paraopeba Campus (CAP), currently pursuing his Ph.D. in CubeSat Antennas at UFSC; a student currently in the 6th period of the Telecommunications Engineering undergraduate course (class of 2019); and a professor in the Department of Telecommunications and Mechatronics Engineering (DETEM). This initiative is intended to be a gateway to the space/satellite technologies in the institution and is based on three main pillars: Competitions, Research, and Extension in Nanosatellites. The team aims to obtain and develop small satellite technologies involving CAP undergraduate and graduate students, which enables them to learn the concepts of Space Engineering with the methodology of "learning by doing", covering the entire lifecycle of a spacecraft, even in a less complex way, through Systems Engineering approach. It also encourages the students to carry out scientific studies, prepare and publish papers, participate in conferences, and through extension, spread all the knowledge acquired in the various layers of society in the Alto Paraopeba region. Team members are all undergraduate and graduate students. Considering that one of the main characteristics of the team is its multidisciplinary nature, it leads to the advantage that students from all courses offered at CAP can join the group. This is reflected a lot by the concept of satellite engineering, since professionals from various areas of knowledge are sought for working with satellites and small satellites. Thus, in this work the main numbers related to the team were gathered, collected and presented in order to assess the impact and/or reach of the activities in its first year of existence. Data were extracted from databases, histories, and records on the various knowledge and information dissemination platforms. Regarding the research approach, the team obtained a significant number of scientific productions; regarding extension, presentations with satellite subjects were performed; and a great achievement with the competition aspect was obtained, which shows the effectiveness of these three approaches.