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, the satellite took almost four years to be designed, built and tested by an interdisciplinary team of student engineers. 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:


 * 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.