The Kentucky Space team has hit the new year with a lot of momentum in the KySat-2 program. We carried out a four hour long design review right before many of the students left for their holiday vacations. No serious issues came out and prototyping of individual system has begun. It’s an exciting time for myself and everyone involved as new parts come in daily.

One of the most exciting additions to Kentucky Space since our last K2 Tuesday is the addition of a Makerbot Replicator 2. Since unpacking the box we have been printing parts to the spacecraft to check fits, deployment mechanism, and just about everything you can think of. This a tremendous tool for us since we are attempting to build a spacecraft in a tight timeline. The printer allows us to experiment and see what works - or doesn't. The second picture shows the first C&DH prototype (the big one) compared with the currently flight model version which has shrunk down to fit inside a CubeSat.

We will be sending off our final mechanical designs in the next week in preparation to begin building the spacecraft at the end of the month.

Twyman Clements - Space Systems Engineer, Kentucky Space

New robotic missions, the rise of commercial carriers and the future of Mars' most recent visitor, Curiosity, are among the stories at "Space 2013, A New Year of Missions and Events" at Wired. Far be it from us to tell Wired what space stories to report for its "new year in space," but we think the emergence of crowdsourced and do-it-yourself spacecraft like KickSat, SkyCube and ArduSat are pretty exciting developments.

Kentucky Space will also be flying its second cubesat, KySat-2, this year as well. Stay tuned as we report on its the development.

Wayne

Image Credit: "Layered Martian Outcrop 'Shaler' in 'Glenelg' Area," NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS