USU Launches Partnership With Brazilian Aeronautics Institute

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The "Utah State University (USU)" has announced that it has signed a space partnership agreement with the “Technical Aeronautics Institute / Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA)” of Brazil.

Duda Falcão

TODAY

USU Launches Partnership With

Brazilian Aeronautics Institute

By Matt Jensen,

435-797-8170

matthew.jensen@usu.edu

Friday, Aug. 10, 2018

ITA Professor and Rector Anderson Ribeiro Correira,

left, greets USU Provost Francis Galey and

USU Professor Charles Swenson, center.

Two global leaders in aerospace engineering education are joining forces. Administrators from Utah State University and Brazil’s Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, or ITA, (Technical Aeronautics Institute) located in São Jose dos Campos in the state of São Paulo, signed a memorandum of understanding on Aug. 6 to coordinate research efforts and exchange scientific knowledge.

The document, signed by USU’s President Noelle Cockett and ITA’s Rector Anderson Ribiero Correia, kicks off a five-year partnership. USU Provost Francis D. Galey led the signing event. University leaders say the arrangement provides a unique opportunity for the two organizations to pursue joint research and exchange faculty and students.

“We are pleased to have completed this agreement of cooperation with ITA of Brazil,” said USU’s Galey. “It’s our hope the agreement will help further the work being accomplished by our collaborating faculty members.”

USU’s relationship with ITA goes back several years. Charles Swenson, a USU professor of electrical engineering and director of the USU Center for Space Engineering, has worked with many of Brazil’s science and space agencies. His ongoing research into space weather and its effects on global communication and navigation is particularly valuable to Brazil.

Equatorial regions including Northern Brazil and Peru are susceptible to an upper atmospheric phenomenon that disrupts GPS and radio communications: equatorial plasma bubbles that produce scintillation on radio waves.

Swenson is the deputy principal investigator on a Joint NASA-Brazil CubeSat mission to study the problems and potential solutions. According to a NASA press release about the upcoming mission, the Scintillation Prediction Observations Research Task (SPORT) mission, will observe equatorial plasma bubbles and scintillation to understand what causes them, determine how to predict their behavior and assess ways to mitigate their effects.

ITA Professor and Rector Anderson Ribeiro Correira and

USU's President Noelle Cockett signed a memorandum of

understanding on Aug. 6. The agreement sets up a five-year

research collaboration. USU Provost Francis Galey

led the signing event.

“SPORT is the first of what we hope are many joint space projects between the U.S. and Brazil,” said Swenson. “And we are pleased to be able to contribute our expertise in CubeSats and to provide the critical space weather probes for the SPORT mission.”

The joint U.S.-Brazilian team will launch the SPORT CubeSat in 2019. The compact satellite is about the size of two loaves of bread. It will be launched to an Earth orbit approximately 217-248 miles high (350-400 km). Its operational phase is expected to last at least a year.

Contact: Professor Charles Swenson,

435-797-2958,

charles.swenson@usu.edu

Source: Website USU - http://www.usu.edu

Comentário: Bom, bom, muito bom mesmo, e espero que outras parcerias com esta sejam feitas pelo ITA, não só a nível internacional como também e pincipalmente a nível nacional. Temos várias Universidades, institutos, centros de pesquisas e startups brasileiras que poderiam colaborar e muito (a exemplo da USP, UFSM, UFRGS, UFPR, UnB, UFSC, UFMG, UFRN, IME, CTI Renato Acher, LNA, Airvantis, Acrux entre outros) na formação de seus alunos, na criação de novos projetos e no desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias espaciais para o país. Como exemplo já está em curso o agora denominado “Consorcio Garatéa”, consorcio este que tem como principal objetivo a “Missão Lunar Garatéa-L”, e ao qual o próprio ITA é um dos seus membros ao lado de algumas das instituições citadas acima. Vale aqui dizer leitor que o “Consorcio Garatéa” além desta missão lunar, prever nos próximos dez anos (até 2028) diversas outras missões, sendo a primeira delas (antes mesma da missão lunar) a “Missão Garatéa-LEO”, que visa em 2019 o lançamento de um cubesat em órbita LEO, para assim testar previamente em voo todas as tecnologias e experimentos que serão utilizadas nesta missão lunar. A nossa esperança e que este exemplo seja seguido por outros grupos científicos do país, e assim consolidar de vez em nosso país a pesquisa espacial tão necessária para o futuro de nossa sociedade. Quanto ao projeto SPORT (Scintillation Prediction Observations Research Task), citado na matéria acima, trata-se do desenvolvimento de um interessante cubesat científico 6U, este destinado a gerar dados que possam auxiliar na compreensão do surgimento das bolhas ionosféricas. Este projeto envolve o ITA, o INPE, a NASA e algumas universidades americanas, e entre elas a “Utah State University (USU)”, parceira desse acordo assinado agora com o ITA.