Spacecraft Development Laboratory

The Spacecraft Development Laboratory will allow the fabrication, assembly, and integration of flight-ready components of micro and nanosatellites and ultimately support the fabrication of prototype MEMS/MRAs and allow the fabrication of commercial numbers of these devices.

Spacecraft systems assembled and integrated (to date) in the MSU Clean Room include:

The Cosmic X-Ray Background Nanosatellite—a 2U CubeSat selected by NASA for a flight opportunity in 2012
TechSat-1—a collaboration between MSU, Radiance Technologies, Honeywell, and Tethers Unltd. To build a high-power 3-U CubeSat for the U.S. Space and Missile Defense Command,
UniSat-5—a collaboration with the University of Rome to build a 15 kg microsatellite designed to measure the polarization of gamma-ray bursts.


MEMS for Space Applications: NASA and the aerospace industry have a special interest in MEMS technology. Some of the systems utilizing MEMS devices for space applications in planning our under development at MSU are:

• Microthrusters
• Mass Spectrometers
• Magnetometers
• RF Switches
• Microgyroscopes
• Microsatellites